Following a day of relative calm, the Israeli military carried out a series of strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight. According to the army, the strikes were in response to incendiary balloons and rockets fired earlier toward Israel by Hamas.
In other news, police say fifty-nine gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in Massachusetts were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti. Two of the gravestones had been knocked over. The stones were desecrated with swastikas and phrases including “Hitler was right.”
According to experts, America is experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism that is unprecedented in the last half-century. Anti-Semitism is also rising sharply across Europe: France reported a 74 percent increase in the number of offenses against Jews, while the number in Germany surged by more than 60 percent.
As I noted yesterday, discrimination is also escalating in America against those who affirm biblical morality. We are certainly not facing aggression on a level experienced by Jews around the world, but Jesus’ prediction for his followers is nonetheless true for us: “The world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:14).
It would be easy to abandon hope for our culture. But it’s always too soon to give up on the future because it’s always too soon to give up on God.
“Let this cup pass from me”
I led a study tour of Israel last week. On Thursday, our group spent a very moving hour in the Garden of Gethsemane. I read from Matthew 26, where Jesus pled with his Father, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (v. 39).
Why did our Savior seek so fervently to avoid the “cup” that awaited him?
The physical torture Jesus faced would be horrendous. But the greater cost of the cross was spiritual: the Father would place the sins of fallen humanity on his sinless Son. For the only…
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