Holy Week in a World at War

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The year I moved to Vietnam to teach, my friend Hoang saw a rainbow in his dream. He had always been curious about other cultures and faiths, and we studied the Old Testament some evenings. Hoang didn’t consider Noah’s story written for him — until Yahweh met him while asleep. 

It changed me, too. I was 22. I didn’t have a category for this. Being young and idealistic, I did the only thing I knew how: I poured my heart out like a fool in love for Hoang and our little band of friends, spending long days in the heat on bikes, beaches, and in conversation.

That was decades ago now.

But a few years back, I began to dream, too — a recurring dream across months. In my sleep, I wander the streets of the Vietnamese seaside town where I once lived, looking for familiar faces. I hear motorbikes whiz and the song of the language. But I can’t find my friends. Longing beats in my heart as I search, until I awake with a melancholy I can taste, a yearning to meet them.

Led by this repeated dream, I journeyed back to Vietnam this year, and I found Hoang. I asked him to tell me the story again. Did I invent it all? With materialist skepticism clouding my memory, I wanted to know. To test. To remember.

He recounted his dream  exactly as I recalled. “That’s when I knew God wanted me to join Him,” he told me over steaming plates of rice and fish.

There’s more, too — dreams, I mean. On this journey back to Asia, other friends snuck me away to coffee to tell of dreams they’ve had since I’ve been gone. One man shared visions by the sea he had of God calling him — then finding himself suddenly gone from skeptic to son. Another woman of being barren for years, then embraced by Christ in a dream — and suddenly finding herself great with a child. In a word, more miracles through dreams. 

I’ll be honest. I’m embarrassed to write this, because I’ve stopped believing this stuff really happens.

You might feel the same way. When someone tells stories like these, they’ll eventually try to ask you for something or spiritually manipulate you. But, there’s nothing at stake in sharing this for me, except perhaps my own heart.

I don’t know what to make of this, but I have to tell my story — how my dreams and my faith are bound up with a handful of men and women on the other side of the world.

We’ve stopped believing God speaks in dreams.

And, in a different way, we’ve learned to live with war.

Global violence feels constant, like background noise. The headlines are endless. Conflicts layered on conflicts, until we lose track of where one ends and another begins.

This Holy Week arrives in a world like that.

A world where families are still fleeing their homes — where violence redraws the map of ordinary life overnight.

Today, crisis in the Middle East has escalated again. Recent strikes have displaced hundreds of thousands, forcing families to flee with almost nothing. Schools and shelters are filled with those who have lost their homes.

Holy Week also began in a place where violence was painfully normal.

Jesus did not enter a quiet city. He rode into Jerusalem as tensions were rising; as people longed desperately for deliverance.

Hosanna. Save us.

Journeying back to Southeast Asia this year, I thought about the origins of World Relief’s work with refugees in the U.S. — which began with Grady and Evelyn Mangham living in Vietnam through the war. For years, they built relationships with people in this country that would eventually see thousands of its sons and daughters searching for refuge.

They returned to the United States as Vietnamese families began seeking refuge across the globe. At first, there was no clear path to receive refugees. No process or permission. Just a growing awareness that something had to be done.

So the Manghams began calling churches one by one. Sharing stories. Asking communities to welcome strangers as neighbors.

In that improvised moment, World Relief began to resettle refugees — because the Church stepped up and said yes. 

Because people who loved fiercely would not look away.

Holy Week reminds us that we reflect the love of Christ, who does not look away.

I don’t know what to do with these dreams.

I don’t know why some people see rainbows in their sleep and wake up convinced God is calling them, while others of us strain to hear anything at all.

I don’t know how to make sense of a world where beauty and violence sit so close together — where a joyous meal of rice and fish are shared alongside the memory of nations once at war, where belly laughter and great loss happen together in different places across the globe.

But maybe I don’t need to resolve this. Perhaps instead, I am being invited to notice something deeper: that God sees and meets us.

In Vietnam, decades ago as now, in the quiet of sleep.

In Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, in the tension of a city on edge.

In Lebanon today, where displaced people sleep in unfinished garages and crowded shelters.

This Holy Week, we are invited to remember that Jesus is still meeting people.

So we fast and pray for peace and protection for those who have been displaced by violence. We pay attention to the pain we are often tempted to scroll past. We respond through generosity and welcome to those who are afraid. 

Through partnerships with local churches and organizations in places like Lebanon, World Relief is working to provide emergency shelter, food, blankets, and spiritual care for families who have lost nearly everything. Here’s how you can join us.

Call me strange, but amidst all this, I believe God is still speaking — that even in a world at war there is a deeper story unfolding through displacement.

I admit I don’t have a tidy summary to wrap all this into. But maybe that’s what Holy Week is for: to see Jesus moving toward us, even in these great tensions.

Because the hope of Christ does not wait for peace, it meets us in the broken places.

And somehow, amidst impossible pain, God’s dream of new creation is born.

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