The world can look like a mess. But God is still in control.
Corrie ten Boom, whose family helped hide and rescue Jews during the Holocaust at tremendous personal cost, famously illustrated this truth with a piece of embroidery. She would first hold up the back: knots, loose ends and tangled threads with no obvious pattern. Then she would turn it around to reveal a beautiful crown.
We see the underside. God sees the pattern.
It is an apt picture for the world this week.
The United Nations has commemorated 25 years since the Durban Conference. Twelve countries have announced or are considering restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements. Iran and the United States remain divided over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has declared that his government’s reform programme is complete. And Israel is approaching an election on 27 October amid continuing regional tensions.
From underneath, these threads can appear tangled beyond recognition.
Yet this week the Jewish people are also celebrating Sukkot—the Feast of Tabernacles. Across Israel and around the world, Jewish families are eating and gathering in temporary shelters called sukkot, remembering how God sustained Israel in the wilderness. In 2026, Sukkot runs from the evening of 25 September through 2 October.
The fragile sukkah is itself a reminder: security does not finally come from walls, governments or armies, but from the God who shelters His people.
As Paul writes, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
We do not yet see the whole tapestry.
Durban at 25: an unresolved legacy
On 28 September, the UN General Assembly held a high-level meeting marking the 25th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. The UN describes the document as an important international framework for combating racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia. This year’s meeting was explicitly intended to renew support for its implementation.
But Durban carries a deeply contested history.
Long before the 2001 conference, the UN had already wrestled with the relationship between anti-racism and Zionism. In 1975, General Assembly Resolution 3379 declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The resolution was revoked in 1991.
At Durban itself, tensions over Israel became so severe that the United States and Israel withdrew their delegations. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson also publicly expressed distress over the “vitriolic” language and inappropriate material circulating at the parallel NGO Forum and declined to recommend its declaration to governments.
That history explains why the anniversary remains controversial.
More than 40 countries stayed away from this year’s commemoration—more than the 38 reported to have boycotted the 20th-anniversary event in 2021. Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon and other critics argue that commemorating Durban without adequately confronting its antisemitic legacy risks perpetuating the very prejudice an anti-racism programme should oppose.
There is an important distinction here. Fighting racism is essential. The question raised by Durban’s critics is whether that fight can remain credible when antisemitism is tolerated within it.
Iran and the Strait of Hormuz
Another tangled thread runs through Iran.
Seven months into the current conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains one of its central pressure points. Iran recently proposed a seven-day process under which the waterway could reopen if the United States agreed to conditions including a wider ceasefire, relief from the naval blockade, easing of oil sanctions and the release of frozen Iranian assets. Nuclear negotiations would follow.
President Donald Trump rejected the proposal as presented, while indirect diplomacy has continued through regional mediators. Iran has since indicated that it has received an official US response, although the full details have not been made public.
For Israel, these negotiations are occurring less than a month before Israelis vote for the 26th Knesset on 27 October.
Once again, we see only part of the picture: military pressure, diplomacy, economic sanctions and political calculations all crossing over one another.
Have Palestinian reforms really been completed?
At the UN General Assembly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas presented another important claim: that the PA has now completed the national reform programme promised to the international community.
Abbas said reforms had strengthened public financial management, transparency, accountability, anti-corruption measures and the rule of law. He also said the previous prisoner-payment system had been replaced by a unified welfare programme based on need, and that Palestinian education was being reformed in cooperation with UNESCO.
That account is contested.
Significantly, the UN’s own September assessment is more cautious. The Office of the UN Special Coordinator reported genuine progress in areas including public finance, procurement and social protection, but said important reforms were still pending—including judicial independence, access to information, social protection and education.
The United States has taken a more critical position. On 16 September, the State Department said the PA and PLO had again failed to meet certain commitments and alleged that stipends connected with convicted terrorists were continuing. The Department extended visa restrictions against PA and PLO officials as a consequence.
Education remains contested as well. IMPACT-se’s review of the 2025–26 Palestinian curriculum concluded that the materials it examined were “substantively unchanged” and continued to contain material promoting jihad and martyrdom, glorifying terrorism and rejecting peacemaking. Those are the organisation’s findings, rather than an uncontested international assessment, but they raise serious questions against the claim that reform is already complete.
The careful conclusion, therefore, is not that nothing has changed. Reform efforts are clearly underway. It is that declaring the process finished goes further than the available evidence allows.
Seeing Israel through biblical eyes
What, then, should Christians make of a week like this?
The Bible does not require us to pretend that modern geopolitics is simple. The modern State of Israel, established in 1948, is a contemporary nation-state populated by Jews and non-Jews, governed through political institutions and confronted by the same complexities, failures and difficult decisions that confront human societies everywhere.
But Scripture also gives Christians a longer horizon.
Paul warns Gentile believers concerning the Jewish people: “Do not be arrogant toward the branches … it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11:18). Later in the same chapter he writes that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).
Jeremiah 31 speaks of God’s covenant faithfulness to Israel in language as enduring as the sun, moon and stars.
This is where the image of Corrie ten Boom’s tapestry becomes so helpful.
Looking only at the underside, we see diplomatic disputes, elections, sanctions, accusations, military threats and apparently contradictory developments. We can easily become convinced that everything is unravelling.
But Scripture asks us to see history through another lens.
It does not give us permission to ignore facts, excuse wrongdoing or pretend that every political decision made by Israel—or by anyone else—is automatically righteous. Rather, it reminds us that human affairs do not sit outside God’s sovereignty.
The threads may be tangled to us.
They are not tangled to Him.
Prayer for the week ahead
So let us pray for Israel and her leaders as the 27 October election approaches, asking God to grant wisdom in a season of extraordinary political and security pressure.
Let us pray for those who oppose Israel and for those caught in the conflicts surrounding her—that violence, hatred and hostility might give way to repentance, justice and peace.
Let us pray for Israelis and Palestinians alike, especially those who have suffered and those who long for a future in which their children can live without fear.
And let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
During Sukkot, Jewish families willingly sit beneath temporary roofs and remember that their ancestors survived the wilderness because God sheltered them.
Perhaps that is a message Christians need to hear as well.
We do not have to understand every thread before we trust the Weaver.
For now, we see the underside of the tapestry.
One day, we will see the other side.