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Finding Peace
by Mark Ellis & Rob McKinney
We march for it, fight for it, and pray for it. But whether it’s in Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Middle East, peace seems unattainable.
A year after the events of Sept. 11 shattered the peace of Americans, an audio tape apparently of Osama bin Laden threatens
Canadians with terrorist attacks.
Peaceful Canada may soon experience what much of the world knows all too well — uncertainty, terror, and death.
While Canada as a country has known peace since the Second World War, if asked, many Canadians would probably admit that
they lack peace in their heart — especially when hardship strikes.
The Bible says a peace that’s unshakable — regardless of circumstance — is available to everyone through Jesus Christ, who said, “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.”
(John 14:27) It is a peace that “transcends understanding,” the
Bible tells us. (Philippians 4:7)
Moran Rosenblit and Taysir Abu Saada (“Tass”) know of that incomprehensible peace.
Tass was a Fatah sniper trained to kill Jews. His hatred was so strong he dreamed of poisoning Jews who frequented the restaurant where he worked.
Moran Rosenblit was a soldier for Israel who became embittered after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed seven of his friends.
Both men left the cauldron of the Middle East in search of a better life in America.
After he arrived in the U.S., Tass worked in the hotel and restaurant industries in Kansas City, Missouri, where he met an American named Charlie Sharpe.
Sharpe spoke to Tass about a “spiritual connection” he enjoyed, which brought miraculous blessings and peace. Weeks went by as Tass pondered what this connection might be. He begged Sharpe to give him the secret.
Sharpe told him, “Tass, to have the peace that I have you
must love a Jew.” Tass was taken aback. “I hate these people — you know how I feel about them,” he said.
“What do you know about Jesus Christ?” Sharpe asked. “I know Jesus — he’s a prophet,” Tass replied. “Well, He’s more than
that. He’s the Son of God ... He is God,” Sharpe said.
Sharpe got a Bible and placed it between the two men.
“The minute he put the Bible between the two of us I started shaking and jumped away from it,” Tass recalls. “Let me tell
you what the Word of God says about Jesus Christ,” Sharpe said,
as he began to read from the book of John.
“When he started reading,” Tass says, “I started shaking and I lost consciousness and the next I know I’m on my knees on the
floor with my hands lifted up, inviting Christ to be my Lord
and Saviour,” he says.
“I felt like a mountain lifted off my shoulder and a joy and peace came into my heart I never experienced before.”
Tears were flowing from Charlie’s eyes. “Do you know what
happened? You’ve become a Christian,” Sharpe told him.
“Well, if the reason I’m feeling the way I’m feeling in my
heart is because He is the Son of God, then I want Him to be
my Lord and Saviour.”
During the same time period, God was working in the heart
of an ex-Israeli soldier named Moran Rosenblit. His outlook about
life changed dramatically after a suicide bomber demolished his
unit near Netanya, Israel. “About 22 soldiers died on that day,
and seven were friends of mine,” he says.
“Two weeks later another friend died in Lebanon and I didn’t go to the funeral because I’d had enough of feeling the pain,”
Moran says.
Months later, two helicopters collided killing 86 Israeli
soldiers. None were friends of Moran, but the mounting death
toll left him feeling depressed, “like something was missing.”
Moran also served four months in Lebanon. “I didn’t know if I was going to come back,” he says. One week after he left Lebanon,
“seven soldiers died driving the same road we drove.”
Shaken, Moran’s depression mounted, and he tried to drown
his sorrows with alcohol at local nightclubs. A Swedish girlfriend
inspired Moran to leave Israel, and he traveled first to England,
then the United States. Leaving loved ones behind, he found himself
in California, rooming with a Christian family.
As he watched the family exercise their faith, his own questions about God began to surface. “I saw [the mother] teaching her
kids about God and I wondered, ‘Is there a God?’ ”
When a friend invited Moran to church, the pastor encouraged him to read the Bible.
Later, while Moran was reading the Bible, something unusual happened.
“The Holy Spirit just fell down on me, just filled me up,”
Moran says. “The light switch went on and from darkness I saw
the light, and I accepted Jesus into my life.”
As Moran grew in his faith, a friend invited him to share
his testimony at a conference for Arab and Jewish believers.
“It was hard for me to share in front of Arab people,” Moran admits, “because some of those people might have been people
who killed my friends.”
As Moran finished his testimony, a Palestinian man approached him. “I was a Fatah fighter,” said Taysir Abu Saada, the 51-year old ex-PLO man also known as “Tass.”
“I was in shock,” Moran recalls, as he took a half step backward, and stared into Tass’s eyes, trying to read his heart.
Moran says Tass “looked me in the eyes and he said, ‘I love you.’ I can’t explain what that did to my heart when he said
that.”
Then Tass did something even more radical. “He asked me to
forgive him in the name of his people for my friends who died
from suicide bombers,” Moran says. “It was God’s grace that allowed
me to forgive him.”
Then Moran asked Tass to forgive him “for not being able to love him and trust him” and for his anger towards Arabs. “And
he did,” says Moran. Soon small groups were forming of Arab and
Jewish believers praying together.
“Here I was praying with an ex-enemy in the name of Jesus
— the one and only true God,” Moran says.
Since that conference in March 2001, Moran and Tass speak
to one another almost daily, as their bond of friendship grows
without measure.
“Jesus touched my heart,” Tass says. “It goes to show the
world there is hope in Jesus,” he says.
With the Middle East caught in a repetitive cycle of violent revenge, many are losing hope.
“I don’t think there is a political solution,” Moran says.
“I believe there needs to be a change of heart to love.”
“If God changed my heart and Tass’s heart he can change anyone’s heart,” says Moran. “People can only live in peace together through Jesus Christ — but that’s the only way to bring peace.”
Portions of the above story courtesy ASSIST News Service.
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