Not going to Israel

It has been a quiet week on Speaker of Truth, not because I am taking a deliberate summer break, but because my mind has been on other things.

I had been expecting that this coming Sunday I would be flying to Israel with a team from my church, to spend a week in Nazareth working with an Arab church there, and then a week based in Jerusalem. Nazareth is the home town of my vicar (pastor) as well as of my Saviour.

By last weekend the trip was already in doubt because of the conflict with Lebanon. But we expected that the Arab town of Nazareth would be out of the firing line. However, on Wednesday night we heard that two Arab children had been killed by a rocket which landed there just 150 metres from my vicar's family home - and 135 people were sent to hospital. With this kind of attack Hezbollah show themselves not to be freedom fighters targeting an enemy, but terrorists who kill indiscriminately - but then perhaps they fired these missiles in haste as the Israeli army closed in on their launchpad. Anyway, in response to this the Nazareth city council closed down public meetings, so making the church children's club which we planned to run impossible.

So, even if we had been fearless enough to go, we would not have been able to do what we had intended. On that basis we decided yesterday to cancel the trip, or at least postpone it until next year. Of course all of this has been on my mind for most of the week. And it has stopped me concentrating on blogging - although it prompted another team member to start a blog about the trip. But it does mean that this blog won't be closing down for the next two weeks as I had intended, although I may take a shorter break.

And then I have also been enjoying the record summer heat, but not wanting to sit too long in front of my computer. We were expecting a hot time in Israel, but it looks like it may be just as hot here.