For this meditation, I would like to share with you some excerpts of testimonies and texts heard in preparation for and during the General Assembly of the World Communion of Reformed Churches - WCRC in Thailand, placed under the theme "Persevere in your witness".
This Assembly has witnessed all the revolting and disturbing situations and themes of our world. To be honest, it was depressing, but also a necessary reminder that we must go through it to find a word that is not a cheap consolation. Before being able to taste and appreciate interventions that allow us to go further than accusation, denunciation, and the cry of alarm or suffering, it was necessary to relearn how to suffer with those who are suffering. "We must share our sufferings to be a united church,” said a Swedish pastor.
That’s what Rima Nasrallah did. She is a Lebanese pastor and a practical theology professor at NEST in Beirut (Near East Seminar of Theology). This spring, during the war in Gaza, she published this brief meditation on an excerpt from the Book of Lamentations 5:
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.
3 We have become fatherless, our mothers are widows.
4 We must buy the water we drink; our wood can be had only at a price.
5 Those who pursue us are at our heels; we are weary and find no rest.
6 We submitted to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread.
7 Our ancestors sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment.
8 Slaves rule over us, and there is no one to free us from their hands.
9 We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the sword in the desert.
10 Our skin is hot as an oven, feverish from hunger.
11 Women have been violated in Zion, and virgins in the towns of Judah.
12 Princes have been hung up by their hands; elders are shown no respect.
« They say: "Peace, peace..." but there is no peace!
Do we dare to talk about peace when every day we see dozens of children being killed before our eyes? Families chased from their homes, young people shot while waiting for food?
We want to look away, move on to more cheerful images. These scenes have become too difficult to bear and we feel powerless in the face of a situation that continues to darken. Our mind cannot conceive how human beings can inflict this on others.
And yet, the book of Lamentations reminds us that this is not new. Similar scenes, with different weapons of course, took place on this same ground and repeated time after time between different groups of people. The same pain and the same atrocious acts.
And even if we feel driven to act and dream of solutions, it is also important to recognize suffering. We must cry with the child whose family is no longer, tremble with the teenager who escapes the bullets trying to get a thin piece of bread, and grind in the dark with the old man who sees the fruits of his life collapse. We must see the pain and acknowledge the loss.
When we move too quickly from criticism of war to discussion of peace, we risk turning these experiences into abstractions and ignoring the trampled lives of individuals. We fall into the trap of counting numbers and forgetting names.
If we have learned anything in the Middle East, it is that war is not just a strategy designed by leaders, nor a battle fought with drones and rockets for a few months or years, but that it is inscribed in bodies and damages souls for future generations. And finally, she reproduces...
That’s why we raise our voice before God today to lament. We cry and ask: "Until when, Lord? And how many more times? Come, O Lord, and bring restoration to all your people.
In Chiang Mai, we indeed had to relearn to first listen, for a long time, to the suffering of so many people on earth.
During the Assembly, two particular speeches impressed me: the first was a presentation by Prof. Jude Lal Fernando, an Irish-Sri Lankan theologian, at Trinity College in Dublin. In his presentation on the resurrection understood as the divine rebellion against suffering and death, he particularly overturned the classic Western sequence of steps that lead the believer to act against evil: look, judge/think, act. From his reading of the biblical texts, in particular of the crucifixion and the resurrection, he draws another series: listen, act, see. It is first of all about listening attentively to the cries and discerning in them the necessary action that follows. The action done, one can see the result. Our challenge, that of the mission of the Church, is to break down the barrier between listening and action which allows God to restore life. Those today who orchestrate hatred and suffering in the world are "Christian" nations. How can Christianity solve this problem?
Another voice from the Middle East has provided an answer to this dilemma. It is Pastor Adon Naaman, from Homs, Syria. Homs, capital of the Islamic State for several years. Adon is a young pastor, recently graduated from NEST. The parish no longer had a pastor during this period. He was placed there after the defeat of ISIS. After the flight of Bashar al-Assad last December and the seizure of power by the Islamists in Idlib, he was repatriated to Lebanon for a few months out of safety. He is now back. In Chiang Mai, he gave a strong testimony of which here are some extracts.
“ We learned to live one day at a time, to hold our dreams carefully — like glass. In the beginning, we used to say: “One day this will end.” But after years of war and displacement, people stopped counting days. We learned a new way of living — one where the horizon disappears, and you keep walking anyway. But Is this experience only Syrian one? It is shared by many in our world: in Gaza, in Sudan, in Lebanon, in Ukraine, in every place where people wake up not knowing what tomorrow will bring. From this soil of uncertainty, something began to grow inside me — slowly, quietly — a new way of understanding faith and hope.
A theology born not from books or conferences, but from the daily act of surviving with dignity. I call it “Horizonless Hope.”
What does this mean? Horizonless hope is hope practiced when the future is hidden. It is the faith to keep walking when the road fades into fog. It is not about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel — it is about becoming the light inside the tunnel. There is a quote by the Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous that I always remember. It says: “We are condemned to hope.” I think he meant that hope is not optional for us. It is not a mood. It is a survival skill. It is the one thing that keeps us human when everything else collapses. In Syria, I discovered that we are condemned not only to hope, but also to context. We don’t get to choose peaceful times for our faith. We live our theology inside the storm, not beyond it. And that’s why I believe horizonless hope is not a luxury for good days. It is the spiritual oxygen for bad ones. It’s what keeps people caring, serving, and believing even when nothing makes sense. It is not optimism — optimism expects things to get better. Hope, in our experience, is something else. Hope is the decision to remain faithful even if things don’t get better. Sometimes, life looks exactly like THIS PICTURE — a road fading into fog. You don’t know where it leads. You only know that you must keep walking. That is horizonless hope.
Horizonless hope is perseverance.
For me, to persevere in witness means to hold the light — not until the dawn appears, but as the light itself when the horizon is gone. And maybe that is what the world needs from the church today. Not louder doctrines, not bigger structures — but communities that dare to hope without guarantees. Churches that remain human, compassionate, and faithful even when results are invisible. Theology, then, is not about predicting the future. It is about care for faith that can survive when the future disappears.
Hope without horizon teaches us community — because in the fog, no one walks alone. And maybe this is what God is teaching the global church in our time: to stop depending on certainty and start depending on one another — and on grace.
In conclusion, the final message of the Assembly has also attempted to take up the thread of hope that has been expressed and strengthened over the days of this Assembly. Here too some excerpts:
Final Message Of the Genenral Council of the WCRC, Thailand 2025
The WCRC believes Christian faith means responding to God’s call to foster justice and meet the spiritual needs of all people in the transformation of the world, through the love of Jesus Christ. Our desire to see change in the world should come from our connection to God and living of the Spirit. Being together in community with others provides us with the capacity for deepening our spirituality
The call to prophetic witness is one that requires courage. We are reformed and reforming, living into the needs of this 21st century church. 150 years ago, reformers took bold steps that pushed them beyond the places of comfort into creating something new. We too, find ourselves in a world that requires we take bold steps to be the counter narrative at a time when injustice is normalized and accepted. Mission continues to be disruptive and transformative, a hope and a future that calls the church to address the growing needs of the world around us. Mission is the church in action.
The call to be communion is one that requires courage. Courage to act on what we have heard and observed, to attend to the need to decolonize our governance and structure to ensure the inclusion of all voices.
Looking to Jesus means we craft a vision that is cantered in following Jesus, his teaching, his deeds, his life in prayer and communion. Jesus took time to step away and pray. He took time to care for himself spiritually and so should we. The psalmist wrote: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Out of the stillness and being with God, we will cast a vision for the church these days. A vision for a future where all are fed and free, a future where the church is relevant and working to dismantle normalized suffering created by the power of Empire. The power of this Communion cantered in the love of God is the power to change the world. May God grant us the courage beyond the tears of yesterday and today. Approved by consensus.
Amen