Fadi knew how to answer the question of why he had come — he lifted his shirt, exposing the scars on his chest from bullet wounds.
“If there’s someone I’m going to hate, it’s you,” he told the men of the house where he was delivering a box of food. The men were Syrian soldiers — soldiers from the army who had shot him when he served in the Lebanese army years ago.
“It was your friends and family that shot me. But because of Jesus’ love, I love you with all my heart. That’s why I’ve come to help you,” Fadi said.
Back when Fadi was shot, Syrian soldiers were occupying Lebanon for military reasons. But this time, the soldiers were there for a different reason — violent fighting is tearing Syria apart.
“People are running across the border into Lebanon, leaving everything behind, bringing only the clothes they are wearing,” said Josef, pastor of the small Baptist church in northern Lebanon that Fadi attends. “Many are emotionally and psychologically injured. Some have seen their homes destroyed.”
In the public eye, Syria seemed a little late jumping on the Arab Spring bandwagon. But when the nation came on the media scene in March with rebels hoping to oust President Bashar al-Assad, the situation accelerated rapidly into violence and bloodshed. And it’s still gaining momentum even though most other countries’ uprisings in Northern Africa and the Middle East have at least moderately calmed down.
The death toll stands at about 3,000, according to the United Nations human rights office. To escape the threat of violence, thousands of Syrian refugees have poured across Lebanon’s northern border — and into the welcoming arms of Josef’s church.
“Our church has become enraptured with the Great Commission. We knew we needed to help them, to share the gospel with them. This could be our only chance,” Josef said.
Many who fled are farmers who left behind fields of crops. Some refugees work in Syria but sleep in Lebanon for fear of what might happen in the night. Nearly all are Sunni Muslim and have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, Josef said.
“We (the church) are small in number, but we had to find a way to help. We had no excuse,” he said.
With the help of the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund, the church loaded up boxes of food and other necessities and headed north, where it found scores of hurting refugees with great needs.
“We saw people having to use plastic bags and newspaper for diapers,” Josef said. “It broke our hearts.”
The boxes have helped more than 1,200 families — Syrians and the Lebanese near the border who have taken the refugees into their homes.
“The Akkar region of Lebanon (near the Syrian border) is the poorest region of the country, and people living in extreme poverty there are taking in Syrian families they can’t afford to feed,” Josef said.
So the boxes are a welcome blessing, but Josef, Fadi and others from their church find the Syrians are hungrier for the gospel than the food.
“You would think they would listen to our message just to be able to get the box but they don’t. Sometimes they say, ‘We don’t need the box but we want a Bible. We’ve been waiting for someone to give us a Bible,’” Josef said.
The church members have returned often to the border villages to check on the people there, and when they do, people greet them by kissing their Bibles and touching them to their foreheads.
“They haven’t burned or torn them, which is common,” Josef said. “They tell us, ‘We want to study the Bible with you.’ We have been teaching them how to live as disciples of Christ.”
The church has distributed more than 1,300 New Testaments in the area since the summer.
Sam Lawson said it’s incredible the way God has thrown open the door.
“You can’t share the gospel freely in Syria, so these people have never heard it before,” said Lawson, a Christian worker in the Middle East. “In a short period of time, we’ve been able to share with the same number of Syrians that it would take us months and months to share with in Syria.”
The number of refugees in Lebanon is waning, and the church prays continuously that God will follow up with the Syrians when they return to their homes, Josef said.
Fadi said it could be the beginning of a movement.
“I feel sorry for what happened to the refugees, losing their homes and having hardships,” he said. “But it might have been the only way for them to hear the gospel.”
Believers in Lebanon asked for prayer that
• the church will know how, when and where to disciple people;
• believers will use their time wisely and be led by the Spirit;
• God will grow these new believers into strong leaders; and
• hundreds of reproducing churches will spring up across northern Lebanon and throughout Syria.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Names have been changed for security reasons. (IMB)
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