A word to our brothers and sisters in Israel
As headlines cycle and the language of war fills our days, we are mindful of those who do not merely read about conflict—but who live inside it.
In recent days, many from our Texas congregation have returned home after tense exits from Israel—crossing by land into Egypt under strain and uncertainty, navigating delayed clearances, and then piecing together flights through Athens, Germany, Spain, and finally back to the United States.
Yet even as some have come out, many of our dear friends remain as permanent residents of Israel.
They live now to the sound of sirens—interrupted nights, hurried descents into bomb shelters, seconds to respond, families gathered in concrete rooms while the sky above them carries threats they cannot control. This is daily life now.
And to you—our brothers and sisters in Israel—you are not forgotten. You are carried in prayer, in thought, and in a real sense of shared burden. The Body is not divided by geography.
My brother-in-law, Dan, shared something striking upon his return. In the midst of the bombardments, when many assumed that emergency flights would be organized to evacuate people out of Israel, the opposite proved true. Israel’s “rescue flights” during that time were inbound—bringing tens of thousands of Israelis home from abroad. Not away from danger, but into it.
That instinct—to return, to belong, to stand with one’s people even in crisis—is not merely national and the kind of loyalty that binds a people together beyond comfort.
I read last night that not only are Israeli citizens coming home, but Jewish people are still immigrating to Israel during this crisis. Just this week, 50 Jewish individuals have chosen this time to move to Israel, to make their aliyah to their nation, coming from Britain and France.
There is something in that which speaks.
Someday, the community of Christ must feel the same pull—not away from difficulty, but toward one another in it. A people who do not scatter when pressure rises, but who press inward, bound by a shared life, a shared calling, and a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
And so my thoughts turn to the Kurutz family and the whole community there in Israel.
Norman and Esther—whose children’s wedding day was pierced by the outbreak of war. Celebration interrupted by grim reality. It is a stark reminder that no life is insulated from conflict. There is no discharge from the wars of life.
What matters is not the avoidance of trial, but the company we keep within it, and the covenant that holds when everything else wobbles and begins to shake.
To understand—and rightly honor—the strength of the Kurutz family, and in many ways the broader congregation there in Israel, it is fitting to recall the story of their patriarch, Alex, whom I first met in 2016 and whose life account I recorded in detail some years ago.
A Story That Still Speaks
Alex Kurutz was born in 1939 in Hungary, as Europe descended into the chaos of the Second World War.
His earliest memories were marked by scarcity, fear, and quiet acts of courage. As an infant, he was carried into prison with his mother—arrested for smuggling bread through barbed wire to those inside a concentration camp. Compassion cost her freedom, and yet she did not withhold it.
Later, she hid a Jewish family in their home. Their valuables were concealed in jars of jam, lined up on the shelves of their family pantry. When the Gestapo discovered them, that family was taken, placed on a train bound for Auschwitz. Yet in one of those rare mercies that punctuate even the darkest histories, the war ended before the train arrived. They survived. And years later, they returned, finding young Alex and embracing him with tears of gratitude.
Then came the Soviets.
Hungary’s “liberation” brought a new wave of terror—looting, violence, and lawlessness. A Soviet tank once stopped in front of Alex’s home, its commander claiming the house as his headquarters. Yet in a paradox that can only be described as providential, that same officer became a shield for the family—turning his weapon against his own men to protect them, and asking, at times, to hear them sing Christian hymns.
At fourteen, Alex was sent to work in Budapest, far from home, living among hardened men in an environment saturated with vice. Yet he emerged preserved.
At seventeen, he joined the Hungarian Revolution of 1956—one of the 200,000 who rose up against Soviet control. For a brief moment, hope surged. Stalin’s statue was torn down. The regime faltered.
Then the tanks returned.
The revolution was crushed. Thousands were executed. Many more fled. Alex became one of them—a hunted young man navigating curfews, slipping through alleyways, crossing streets where Alex recalled that even a drifting scrap of paper could trigger the tat-tat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire. Eventually, he escaped across the border into Austria, moving through minefields under searchlights, lying flat in mud to avoid detection.
From there, the journey continued.
Germany offered immigration, but at a cost: twelve months in underground coal mines, nearly 4,000 feet beneath the earth. Alex accepted. In that darkness—claustrophobic tunnels, collapsing shafts, constant danger—he began to hear something he had not known before: the voice of God.
It was there that his wrist was crushed. There that his collarbone was broken. There that he narrowly escaped death more than once. And yet it was also there that something deeper was formed.
“God, if You can speak to someone this far below the ground,” he prayed, “then I know You are real.”
Eventually, he made his way to Canada, where he built a life—work, family, stability. It would have been enough.
But the call did not leave him.
Through a chain of relationships—his uncle in Israel, a small struggling congregation, and a direct word that cut through his comfort—Alex was confronted with a choice. Stay settled. Or step forward again into uncertainty.
He chose pilgrimage.
He moved his family to Israel, joining a fledgling community that would become a context for hope to be preserved for decades.
The Same Spirit, A New Generation
What began in war and displacement did not end there.
That same thread of courage, sacrifice, and forward motion carried into the next generations.
And so, it is no wonder that when Alex’s children and grandchildren—in the Norman, Samuel, and Ephriam families—heard the call to a fuller life and reality in God, they too became pioneers.
Only this time, their frontier was different. They were setting out to restore family life and vibrant covenant Christian community in the 21st century. As a community, they chose to pioneer homeschooling in the land of Israel. Yes, along with scores of others, they stepped out in faith to pioneer a new model of covenant community altogether.
Their challenges have been different, but no less real.
They did not face the Third Reich, concentration camps, or revolution like Grandpa Alex. They were not driven into mines of physical darkness. And yet, the struggle before them was no less real— the struggle to give birth to a community culture of life.
They had to pull their families out of the grip of technology addiction and the inexorable erosion of a world culture consuming the faith of their children. They had to step away from the inertia of a state-shaped, predetermined life, and into the costly work of building—new businesses, new skills, new faith, new community—pressing a frontier in every sphere of life.
And now, the fruit is coming in.
Their children are maturing, forming marriages, raising families, and walking in the footprints of their parents. Their homeschooling efforts have been recognized and affirmed by the very authorities who initially opposed them. Their family education has been held up as a model for the state.
And in these present days, as a community shaped by service, sacrifice, and giving, they have gone out across Israel—especially since the October 7 attacks—carrying something tangible into places of strain and sorrow. Through gatherings in communities across the land, they bring music, craftsmanship, stories, and the bright presence of families whose lives speak. Children with beaming faces, hands that craft care, voices that sing of hope, life, and love.
Time and again, the same faith that once moved Alex’s mother to pass bread through barbed wire in the 1940s is still at work— offering not just crumbs, but a sustaining way of life. A visible testimony of joy, given to a nation that needs light at evening time.
So wherever you are, and whatever stands before you, remember this: our lives cannot be rightly measured within the narrow frame of our individual moment. Only when seen as a generational story do things come into focus. Nothing is wasted if it is advancing the pilgrimage of life against death, hope against despair, love against hate, light against the darkness of hard times.
My father described this kind of faithfulness as the fetch and the swell of a great oceanic wave—the long, uninterrupted reach, where prevailing winds can build energy across more than 3,000 miles of Atlantic water, and the deep, steady swell carries that power onward for days, even weeks, until at last it rises and breaks against the cliffs of Ireland.
The Through-Line
There is a thread that runs through all of this.
From a prison cell with an infant…
to a refugee crossing a mined border…
to a coal mine deep beneath the earth…
to a family choosing to pioneer community life in the 21st-century…
to sirens now sounding in the night—
It is the thread of faithfulness.
It’s not just a moment; it’s a movement.
That is what a life of covenant produces.
This is what families and communities become when they begin with small steps and refuse to stop: persevering, choosing love, choosing life. In time, that momentum gathers strength enough to carry not only a family, but perhaps a community…perhaps a nation…into a season of grace when it is needed most.
To Our Brothers and Sisters in Israel
Your labor is not unseen.
Your perseverance is not wasted.
Your steps—taken under pressure, under threat, under uncertainty—are sending out reverberations far beyond what you can measure.
You are part of something that cannot be shaken.
“He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”
Hold fast.
Stand together.
Our hearts are with you.