The terror of death and destruction is now paralyzing The Middle East, euphemistically known as “The Holy Land,” constantly finds me gravitating towards the most important emotion of all: gratitude.

And no, this is not a typo. I am grateful that my late sister, Nancie Wingo, did not live to witness the betrayal of everything she experienced during her 33 years as an English teacher, stationed at Beirut Baptist School and later at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. Member of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board.

The possibility of living with physical danger in the Middle East had existed for decades, and Nancie was not immune to its hardships. His school and apartment were in the heart of the Muslim part of the city, and at one point in the 15-year civil war that has claimed the lives of 150,000 Lebanese, a direct rocket hit his sixth-floor apartment, blowing it up. He had left a gaping hole in the living room wall as he and his neighbors took shelter in the building’s basement overnight.

Nancie Wingo on her bombed balcony

Nancie’s reaction when she sees the hole There was something on his living room wall that he hoped would almost go unrepaired because “it opened up a beautiful view of the Mediterranean.”

Throughout this period, students were often unable to reach the school campus safely from their homes. But each time they returned, Nancie was amazed to be greeted with these words: “I hope, Miss Wingo, that God protects us and allows us to return safely.”

Their sense of God protecting them when they were most afraid was an epiphany for Nancie. Nancie later said, “I owe a great debt to these students for showing me how God works to bring goodness into their lives. I have been renewed in gratitude for his love everywhere I live.”

A school with 900 students was opened Although her Muslim students and Muslim neighbors, 70% of whom were Muslim, followed a different path to God, Nancie could not help but respect their path and knew that it was her job only to reflect God’s love as she understood it, and whatever path God chose He said okay, he had to do this. Accept that love is not a decision for him to make. Although it may seem like heresy to some Christians, Nancie has learned through her own lived experience that any resistance to accepting Jesus as Lord and excluding those who do not from the scope of God’s grace is an act of theological arrogance far beyond any man’s pay grade. has learned.

And this seems like a good place to mention that everything to do with the impassioned attempt by Christian nationalists in the United States to force the entire population into submission before their firm belief in what God really has in mind for America is a major threat to the United States, too. American freedom is like Hamas to Gaza or Hezbollah to Lebanon.

Nancie Wingo teaching

Daily encounters with her students were the beginning of Nancie’s understanding that all religious identities are an innate accident. A child born in Tripoli is as likely to become a Muslim as a child born in Texas is a Christian, or even a Baptist.

He didn’t take anything from Nancie The belief that God was most fully reflected in the life of Jesus also saw God fully real in the lives of his disciples and fellow Muslims. “Who am I?” he would often ask: “Is this telling people everything is wrong?”

His Muslim disciples and neighbors repeatedly told him that they held Jesus in high esteem as a prophet, but acknowledged that they could not accept him as God in human flesh.

As the long civil war intensified, Nancie became the last American living in West Beirut (operation of the school had already been turned over to Lebanese Baptists) and in February 1987 she was ordered by the US Embassy to leave the Muslin district of the city within 12 hours. because they could no longer provide him with any protection. He was put on a boat to Cyprus, where he met Baptist missionaries from the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, which is still known as the Gaza Baptist Hospital, although it is now under Anglican rule.

Nancie Wingo looks toward Beirut in Cypress in 1987.

Knowing that you can’t Wishing to return to her beloved Beirut in the near future, Nancie agreed to join nursing students at a Gaza hospital as an English teacher. He arrived just in time to witness the outbreak of the Intifada uprisings, which led to frequent emergency evacuations from underground tunnels in southern Gaza to reach the relative safety of Egypt.

Last year, Al Ahli Hospital was the scene of one of the most severe attacks after Israel’s occupation of Gaza. Palestinian authorities reported that more than a hundred men, women and children who took refuge in the walled compound of the hospital died.

Nancie’s mission in Gaza was to help young nursing students improve their English fluency; this could lead to good nursing jobs in the Middle East and even Europe. Most of the students came from the nearby Jabalia United Nations Refugee Resettlement Centre, whose population is 100,000 Palestinians living in extreme poverty without clean water and open sewer lines.

Nancie frequently visited students and their families were at the center, and he heard over and over how parents saw these students as the only bright hope in their lives. When Israeli forces entered Gaza after Hamas’ attack on October 7, the refugee camp was left under rubble.

After retiring in 1967, Nancie returned home to Fort Worth, Texas, where she found the solace and support of her church, Broadway Baptist. He served as a deacon for several years before his death on Christmas Eve 2016.

Nancie Wingo

Nancie never wavered from her promise of faith, but it became clear to her that religion was the epicenter of nearly everything tearing the Middle East apart. Christians, Muslims, and Jews all have their own agendas on how to make the region safer, and none of them agree.

There will never be peace It is the number 1 priority of everyone living in the Middle East until peace is achieved in the Middle East. For now, this issue is not even on their radar, and such a conversation would require radical changes in all three religions.

Jews, Muslims and Christians must agree that it is better to live in peace and security as neighbors with religious differences than to live as neighbors who hate and fear each other.

All options for achieving peace require difficult decisions that no one wants to talk about:

• Israel must stop claiming that its land was given by God to its ancient ancestors. God did not create the state of Israel in 1948. This action came from the human body of the United Nations, the largest single action in its history. Israel must redraw its borders according to the terms of the UN charter and end its expansion into the occupied West Bank.
• Muslims must accept Israel’s permanence in the Middle East in exchange for recognition of a secure and independent Palestinian state among other countries in the region. Donald Trump’s US election victory only hardens Israel’s resistance to any compromise in the pursuit of peace with its neighbours.
• Christians need to stop telling both that all they really need is Jesus. The world does not need another Christian Crusade.

Only then will the Middle East win The right to be called the Holy Land. Nancie modeled this possibility in her own little way during her many years in Lebanon and Gaza, so no one would ever dismiss it as a pipe dream.

Will this occur more widely in these societies with violent conflict? Probably not. Living in peace with their neighbors has never received much attention at the highest levels in the region, and the brutality of war in the Middle East continues as if fighting was the most important thing for them.

I’m grateful Nancie didn’t get to see this murderous attack on the noblest goal of her life.

Hal Wingo

Hal Wingo He was a 1957 graduate of Baylor University and later served as Baylor regent for nine years. He began his career at Time Inc. in 1963 as a Los Angeles-based national reporter and then became Time Inc.’s Far East regional editor. LIFE Responsible of the magazine in 1968 LIFE Coverage of the Vietnam War. He returned to New York in 1970 as senior editor and was part of the team that created it. People It served as a magazine in 1974. of people Deputy editor-in-chief and international editor until his retirement in 1995. He and his wife, Paula, live in Rancho Mirage, California.