By Neil Earle
Bad news makes everyone feel bad. Sociologists and researchers proved that years ago in the 1970s.
It's hard not to feel disheartened when so many "bad news" stories are clamoring for our attention right now – suicide bombers, the Afghan War spilling into Pakistan, worries about Social Security and on and on it goes.
That's why one personal "good news" example can make your whole day. The April 10, 2002 Los Angeles Times presented a powerful story about a young Jewish woman with a thirst for revenge coming face to face with the Palestinian who shot and wounded her father.
Laura Blumenfeld's father, a Jewish rabbi, was shot and wounded by a Palestinian terrorist in a Jerusalem market in 1986. Laura's book, Revenge: A Story of Hope, details her obsession with her father's shooting. "I wanted to break it down and study it. I wanted to master revenge," she wrote. Blumenfeld's book documents how her vow to avenge her father's injury dissipated when she met the West Bank family of the man who shot her father – Omar Khatib.
Eventually, Blumenfeld, a professional reporter, asked the court for clemency for Omar. Though parole was not granted, the gutsy Blumenfeld eventually brought her father to visit the Khatibs in March, at an all-time low in Jewish-Palestinian relations and in an area where, as she says, the archaeology of revenge is layered "back to the beginning of time."
She made her father real to the Khatibs, just as they had become real to her. "To open the possibility for real dialogue," notes Blumenfeld, "there has to be a way to see through the stereotypes."
A lot of Christians right now are emotionally in synch with Psalm 122:6: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." Perhaps our prayers get answered in ways we don't expect, where it matters most, on the personal level, the vital spot for all true reconciliation to begin.