While Christians in this country celebrate Jesus’ birth, we recoil at the horrors unfolding in the region where he was born. Will Syria’s Bashar al-Assad use chemical weapons on his own people? Perhaps creating a tragedy as happened when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on his Kurdish citizens in 1988, killing and maiming thousands? (We ignored this atrocity at the time because Saddam was our ally against Iran.)

Why does Assad not step down? He could find sanctuary. Russia has supported him. Supposedly, he has friends in South America. Why does he insist on this war of brutality against his own people?

Perhaps he fears retribution against his ethnic sect, the Alawites. The Alawites, a minority in Syria that has ruled the Sunni Muslim majority for decades, fear his downfall, sure of a war of revenge against them if he goes.

The use of chemical weapons is “a red line,” so we are told. What then is our response? What are our plans? We are weary of war. Chemical weapons apparently is the one step Assad could take which would bring retribution on him. But will we be able to act effectively?

What will happen to Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world? The apostle Paul was headed there when he experienced a spiritual turnaround so dramatic that the phrase “Damascus Road experience” has become the code for a life altering conversion. We are in need of such today.