"Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." --Heb. 12:14

Friends,

This month, this verse just keeps popping into my mind here in Japan. "Pursue peace with everyone..."

We find ourselves in strange situations here all the time, but one situation has kept recurring over and over again for the past six months. On a bus ride with some language school friends (all from Asian countries), I mentioned that I regretted all the suffering that has occurred in the after-rmath of Sept. 11th. To my surprise, this opened up a huge conversation about world politics which ended with this statement from one of the Koreans: "We like Americans, but we don't like America right now." I couldn't help but think he inserted the first phrase of that sentence out of deference to a big, lanky American, ME sitting right in front of him!

On multiple other occasions when we've been talking about the state of the world nowadays, both the Japanese friends we've made so far, and other Asians consistently show shock and fear at the US's recent actions. Starting with the administration's "unsigning" of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming; Washington's attempt to block the establishment of the International Criminal Court; the blocking of proposals to increase aid to the Third World at summits in Rome, Canada, and Indonesia; the US's unilateral reneging on the ICBM treaty with Russia; our going ahead with national and theater missile defense systems knowing that this will spark an arms race with China; and most recently, all the talk of attacking Iraq--again, almost completely unilaterally... I could continue...

To make matters worse, I just read a big, front-page article in our daily (Yokohama) paper which quoted U.S. national security advisor Condoleeza Rice as saying that the administration will continue to "proceed from the firm ground of national interest and NOT from the interests of the illusory international community." You can imagine what the "illusory" international community thinks of this kind of talk. I wish people like Ms. Rice would come to understand that it's not so "illusory" when you're living in the middle of it every day.

I guess what worries me is this statement from the author of Hebrews--that, as much as is possible, we ought to try to "pursue peace with all people." It's growing harder and harder to do this every day since Sept. 11th. Kari and I want desperately to be seen simply as a Christian missionaries. Instead, people see us primarily as AMERICANS. That means, all their frustrations at recent US unilateralism get transferred to us--the very real symbols of America which they see every day.

Kari and I are trying as hard as we can to dispel the notion that Americans are only interested in looking out for themselves, because we know lots ofAmericans who certainly are not! (Most of you reading this note, for example!) But the folks we're around don't know many Americans personally--they only know who we are by the movies they see and the politics they read about in the news.

Please pray for us that we won't be "branded" as self-interested opportunists just because we happen to be from America. And if you have a moment, do what you can to try to convince your legislators back home to take account of how their votes change the face of the whole world in this volatile time.

God's Peace to you!

Dwight Davidson

P.S. This month's picture is of one of our language school friends, Rankito. He's Thai, and went to a Christian boarding school in Thailand before coming to Japan. Unfortunately, I think this turned him off to Christianity. We had a wonderful talk this month about the differences between Buddhism and Christianity, and I found out that at one time, he thought of becoming a Buddhist monk. Please pray for him that God would work in his heart and in our friendship to bring us closer together.

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Dwight, Kari, Adam & Sarah Davidson
1-50-1, Mutsuura higashi
Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama-shi 236-0037
JAPAN