Middle East (MNN) — Midweek strikes from Israel and Iran have damaged critical energy fields across the Gulf, including two in Qatar and Iran.
Qatar (Photo courtesy of Ayush Pappini via Unsplash)
On Wednesday, Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field. Iran responded on Thursday with strikes across the Gulf region, which included a gas facility at Qatar’s Ras Laffan plant. These events have made crude oil prices even more volatile.
As the economic impacts of the war spread across the world, so do the psychological and human costs. Fadi Sharaiha from the MENA Leadership Center recognizes people growing numb to living under sirens, missiles, and drone strikes.
“This is what we call the mechanism of defense for people. If you are going through a trauma, what happens is you justify the trauma, or you normalize it,” he says. “This is really a dangerous I would say ‘mental health’ concern that I have for people.”
Iranian boy in a jacket (picture courtesy of Hiva Sharifi via Unsplash)
The numbers surrounding this war keep rising, yet Sharaiha notes, “The first casualty in a war is truth. So nobody knows really the numbers, or what is really happening on the ground.”
Even with the mass of data in Middle East news reports, the fact remains that every person who has been killed was made in God’s image, as well as every person displaced or suffering any kind of loss.
“For me, those are not numbers. Those are faces. Those are people who are created in God’s image. They have aspiration, goals, feelings, emotions. They want to live their lives,” says Sharaiha.
Find your place in the story
As Christians watch the news and pray, Sharaiha urges us to think personally, “to have a face to the number.”
“Please pray for the peace in the Middle East,” he says. “Pray for those people who are being displaced — like 1 million people in Lebanon.”
Lebanon (Stock photo courtesy of Nathan McBride via Unsplash)
Pray for endurance for Christians in the Gulf region. This is so important, because Sharaiha says, “It’s very easy to lose focus and faith whenever you’re going through a trauma, war, or conflict.”
Also, pray a big-picture prayer! Ask God to use His people around the world to speak the true hope of Christ in significant ways during the Middle East conflict. This is tied to what Sharaiha calls “the prophetic voice” of the Church.
“That [prophetic voice] is not politics. We need to go back to peace-building, reaching the unreached, loving people, and making sure that we are available for people to help and support,” he says.
In early March, the MENA Leadership Center’s most recent online training was attended by students whose countries were being bombed in the newly-begun US-Israel-Iran war. Sharaiha says future courses will include an introduction to refugee ministry and a course on conflict resolution.
“We are trying to respond to whatever is happening today, on the ground of people going through war, going through trauma, going through bad times,” he says.
Learn more about the ministry and mission at menaleadershipcenter.com.
Header photo courtesy of a user named Pavellllllll on Pixabay.
