Posted on 05/02/2016 9:53:08 AM PDT by marshmallow
Erbil, Iraq, May 1, 2016 / 04:02 pm (CNA).- Loai Behnam Toubia pulls up his shirt, uncovering a thick, dark scar – probably 10 inches long – that tears vertically down his large, round belly.
With a cockeyed arm he points to three smaller scars that decorate the left side of his misshaped abdomen, marking the times he was shot when ISIS opened fire on his car last year.
I stand in the dust surrounded by rows of boxy prefab trailers listening to his story. I focus on the scar marking where the bullet that landed just centimeters below his heart entered his thick body.
My translator recounts the terrifying story of how Toubia's car burst into flames in the middle of the road he had been driving between Qaraqosh and the small village of Shikhan when ISIS opened fire.
He was pulled to safety by passersby just in time. Now, having barely survived the ordeal, he says that “it was grace that saved me.”
Toubia had been a taxi driver in Qaraqosh – the former Christian capital of Iraq now in the clutches of ISIS after the militants stormed the city, lighting up the night sky with bombs and gunfire Aug. 6, 2014.
Like the 120,000 others who fled with him, Toubia heard late that night that ISIS was coming and crammed his family and a few belongings into his taxi and sped toward Erbil in stop and go traffic alongside the thousands of others who were headed to the same destination.
Since then Toubia has been among the 5,500 Christians, including more than 2,000 children, living in the city’s Aishty 2 camp for the displaced. He had attempted to continue working, driving people from one city to another for income until his car was shot up by ISIS.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
Funny they can have refugee camps in Iraq but “Syrians” have to emigrate to the West. Wonder if it has anything to do with religion...
cheers
Jim
Infidel Christians were not allowed to be armed in Iraq under Hussian OR today’s “modern” Iraqi government.
I worked with Iraqi Christians. Beautiful families, and their small chapels are almost always iconoclastic. I made friends with a guy who operated a sewage truck for the FOB, but he emigrated with his family to Sweden in 2009 when his home was bombed.
He would smuggle in fifths of moonshine for $30 US, so us kids-with-guns could drink after hours, forget about the awful shit.
He told me how he had to pretend to be a cab driver as he left in the morning, by 4am, so that he wouldn’t be branded a traitor for working on the FOB.
This is an example of what NPR has done to journalism. Every story is written in the style of a novel.
No doubt. There seems to be a definite unholy alliance between the Leftists and Islamists. “Christians need not apply.” Never mind the fact that Jihadists have nothing but contempt for the secular values the left peddles.
I’m thinking you don’t mean “iconoclastic.” Iconoclasm calls for the destruction of icons (holy images), and the Syrians have been glorifying God with images in their churches since -— well, documentably, since the 230’s AD (I’m thinking of the ancient Church unearthed at Duro-Europos.)
I have a notion of how *down* you feel. My poor son Vanya has almost given up on life. He has multiple problems from being a Russian Orphanage child, but it goes deeper when you can't figure out why you're even existing.
Shakespeare's MacBeth, in the famous "despair speech" says "Life is tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
But I don't believe that. I believe the Lord can fill all things full of meaning, even suffering can be meaningful, but in a way we only obscurely understand now. If suffering were meaningless, why would Jesus have chosen, yes chosen, the cross?
And said "Take up your cross and follow me."
At first thought, this sounds almost offensive. But, upon pondering, I think it is sufficient. And not only sufficient: offered to the Lord, it ends up glorified with Him.
I will pray for you and yours.
If I may ask, please pray for me and mine.
>If I may ask, please pray for me and mine.<
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Of course I will, but you’re asking the wrong person. My prayers are not heard nor answered and my faith is very weak.
It is written that the Lord resists the proud, but hears the prayers of the broken-hearted. He will hear you and answer you, my friend, because He loves you.
>He will hear you and answer you, my friend, because He loves you.<
.
Wow, That is almost impossible for me to believe or comprehend, but I would very much for it to be true.
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