Christians in Pakistan hold on to hope
Despite the attacks on Christians in the Middle East, those in Pakistan have not lost hope.
"Christians in Pakistan have suffered bomb attack after bomb attack. They are suppressed, beaten and their daughters are forced into marriages with Muslim men. Have all these attacks ever dented their hope? No," said Wilson Chowdhry, the chairman of the British-Pakistani Christian Association, in an interview with Christian Today.
Chowdhry's statement came after the bombing of the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in Lahore on Easter Sunday, where at least 70 people were killed, including almost 30 children, and more than 300 were injured. The Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said they were targeting Christians.
Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore, meanwhile, continues to exhort the people to be strong. According to another report in Christian Today, he visited those injured in the attack, including Christian and Muslim kids, some as young as four. The government, he said, had taken measures to protect churches following last year's attack of two in Yohannabad, "but no one had thought about the park." Most of the people who died were Muslims, with 10 identified as Christians thus far.
Shaw said at the Aid to the Church in Need charity that Christians should not give up hope because although "we were going through a period of grave difficulties, we have to learn to rise up again, just as Christ was able to raise himself again, despite carrying the Cross."
The bombing in Lahore is one the biggest one that happened in Pakistan. In 2014, Taliban militants attacked a military school in Peshawar that took the lives of more than 140 people, at least 130 were children. In 2013, 60 people were killed and 200 injured in the Parachinar market due to two suicide bombs, and almost 80 people were killed and 130 injured when a church in Peshawar was bombed.
Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali also told "Today" on BBC Radio 4, "The Christian community will not lose hope even under the most difficult of circumstances. Our God is a God who suffers with his people and out of that comes resurrection. We must retain our hope in God."
