An accidental faux pas sometimes teaches you a lot about a culture. On this occasion it was a warning from a Lebanese friend that saved me – a Lebanese American living in Beirut – from breaking convention. What crime against custom had I been about to commit? Simply, I was planning to wear my very Californian flip flops in public. […]
Well of course a man should beat his wife if she cheats on him!” It has been three years since my friend made that comment with a laugh, as I stared at her with a stunned expression, and yet I still remember it clearly. It was the first time since coming to Lebanon that I realised the depth of the […]
In the fall-out of war, the need for food, shelter and other basic needs is obvious to all. But refugees’ “spirits also need care”. Dr Kathryn Kraft describes how Lebanese churches are doing this and how we can learn from them. A few weeks ago, I was sharing with a friend at my church in London about my research with […]
As I mentioned in my previous post, materialism plays a heavy role in Lebanese society. Here, “keeping up with the Joneses” takes on an entirely new dimension. Appearance is important; your reputation is everything. Wedding on the Beirut corniche (cwirtanen/Flickr Commons) Lebanese women are famous for being beautiful. A few years back, when I told a taxi driver in Cairo […]
A Christian children’s home nestled in the Chouf mountains outside Beirut and close to one of the country’s famous Cedars of Lebanon reserves is today aptly named Beit El Safa – “The House of Serenity”. But it wasn’t always this way. Originally donated to the Beirut Free Evangelical Church for summer youth camps, the site was twice occupied by different […]
As you listen to Fatma* tell the story of why she, her husband, Ibrahim* and their three girls became five of Lebanon’s one million Syrian refugees – you start to understand why so many have taken the ultimate step of leaving their home country. The chaos and violence have made life in their home country impossible and they feared especially […]
Best friends Myriam (10) and Sandra (9), who were driven from their homes in Iraq by so-called Islamic State (IS) last year and ended up in different countries, were brought together on a live SAT-7 KIDS show. The youngsters were reunited over a video phone call during an episode of Let’s Sing Together marking eastern Easter on 12 April. They […]
The whole of creation belongs to God and this Easter season SAT-7 ARABIC proves you don’t have to be inside a church building to worship. While SAT-7 will air Easter celebrations from churches around the Middle East, another filming location might surprise you. SAT-7 is airing a LIVE Maundy Thursday service at Roumieh Prison in Lebanon. It is the largest […]
I have lived in Lebanon for almost three years yet I still feel I am discovering new things every day. This morning I took a different route to church suggested by my friend and we drove by an ancient Roman aqueduct, built into the cliffs rising above Beirut centuries upon centuries ago. Only five minutes from my apartment and I […]
SAT-7 Egypt Director sees impact of “Resistance through forgiveness” The videos of a ten-year-old Iraqi displaced by IS (Islamic State) and of a brother of two Egyptian labourers beheaded in Libya both voicing forgiveness for their persecutors have been watched by a million viewers and drawn the attention of mainstream Arab media which rarely covers Christian news. Under the title […]
