Samer Daboul, photographer, Syria

Syria- my heart breaks for your health. Your own leaders feel your value is minimal. Powers-that-be across the planet forget that you are children of God.

Like the Syrophoenician woman and her child, they deserve crumbs too. They deserve more than crumbs.

Jesus came to see this. May the Powers-that-be see the people as fully human- as needing more than crumbs. May they see that these children of God crave more than just remnants of goodness found scattered between the shells of bombs and under clouds of poison. May their own leaders see that their lungs need to feel the clean air of the Spirit and not the toxic gasses of hate.

God will call us over and over again to turn our swords into plowshares, our bombs into cornerstones, our guns into farms. God is calling us now to forget the muscle memories of violence and myths of war as a natural means of achieving peace.

May we cease the creation of warheads and build houses of tranquility and prosperity for refugees seeking God’s love and peace.

May we as people of earth, as persons all created in the image of God and as companions on the journeys around the sun gather together to pray, to send energy, to share love with our siblings in Syria.