[I wrote this essay soon after the fall of the Bashir Assad regime
in Syria in December, 2024]

Tears fall as I write this. I weep, glasses off, rivulet’s running down my cheeks, the room around me unseen. I’m lost in the pain of others as I read article on my phone – “Syria’s former ‘slaughterhouse’, a desperate hunt for the disappeared” from the Washington Post written just after the sudden fall of Bashir Assad by HTS Rebels and the opening of the notorious prisons where thousands had disappeared. The words recounting the horrors of that notorious place, the images of that terrible spaces within, of the men breaking through barriers, searching for any people still alive, their friends, parents, siblings, children, morning for those that disappeared.

How can we begin to imagine the horror, the loss, us who live in the safety and the peace of our countries? No, not all of us for many, many have suffered in their own cities and villages also. But us, the blessed ones, yes, we have our own problems, but not like that. Never, never like that.

Can you imagine? The suffering, physical and emotional and yes, spiritual? The desperate questions from families, hoping, pleading, despair. Hundreds of those questions, queuing up over time, a repetitive train running through the person’s heart and soul, and with only silence echoing back, never gaining substance or an answer. Now, a small spark of hope as they search.  

Can you imagine? The ones freed from those hellacious places, their scars visible, horribly visible for some, the internal scars of torture possibly worse than on the body. And they have to go back to a normal life? Is it possible? The enduring mark of the worse of man’s fallen nature permanently carved into their bodies and souls.

For so many, the nature of being a human will triumph over this. Those that lived, scarred as they are, will morn those that died, the uncounted tens of thousands whose end is invisible, an unfinished memory for those who knew and loved them. God build into us the desire to live, despite terrible pain and loss and suffering and darkness. Most survivors will endure. May God be with them.

Yet from the first Adam and Eve until now, the darkness that broods over the earth, it grows in thickness and malevolence, so visible in the horror of lands like Syria, and so many other lands that never make it into the news cycle.

Come, God in Heaven, come down and rescue us all from ourselves! Flood this world with light, and warmth and health and love, as you first desired before the Fall in Eden. Come, God in Heaven, restore this world to what you first intended, this one that continues to slip into darkness despite the many who stood against the darkness for the promise of the Light.

My eyes leak, but the tears are spent. There is always hope for those that look to God. May He give me the strength to stand for good and for right when faced with darkness. And may he heal the bodies and hearts of those living in Syria and undo the evil that has been done.