When Oct. 7 happened, my friend Delly was in Jerusalem. Instead of getting out on the next available plane back to Germany, she called her boss and took 10 weeks of unpaid leave. She just had to be with her Israeli friends, she said. For over two months, she went to funerals, sat shiva with mourning families, comforted the relatives of the hostages, many of whom she knew because they had been guests with her in Germany before.

When my colleague Josias in Berlin heard the incomprehensible news, he sprang into action, organizing speakers, supporters, flags and a stage to publicly convey one message in Germany’s capital on Oct. 8: “ISRAEL, you are not alone!”

When Claudia heard that Israel was lacking workers on the farms and fields, she didn’t wait for official orders. She sent a message to a couple of WhatsApp groups and got on a plane with a dozen volunteers. They slept in tents for a week to clean out dead branches from the winter in a vineyard belonging to Yaakov, who was still dealing with his traumatic images of evacuating dead bodies out of nearby Kfar Aza on Oct. 7.

Why did they do it? Why do Christians for Israel in Germany and more than 40 countries worldwide invest their time and energy, prayers and finances in supporting the nation and the people of Israel?

Because as Christians, we don’t have a different God. When we come out of our pagan darkness into the light, we come to the Eternal One who has introduced himself as the God of Israel in the same Scriptures we read and promised to bless all the nations through Abraham and his descendants. We have come to accept and honor his choice, finding there is room at the table also for those who were not born into the family but came in later, taking their place not instead of, but alongside the Jewish people.

It would be presumptuous to think we could even begin to “compensate” the atrocities committed by our Nazi German grandparents.

Unfortunately, it took us way too long to get there. We got it so wrong as Christians for much of the past two millennia. And we got it double wrong as Germans. But it’s not about German guilt, either. It would be presumptuous to think we could even begin to “compensate” the atrocities committed by our Nazi German grandparents. Only our Heavenly Father can heal the wounds. But in our own broken-ness over what we had done, we’ve received grace. The ruins of bombed-out Germany were still smoldering, when surviving Yehudi Menuhin started playing his violin over our country. How could we not respond? Sixty years ago, the young State of Israel in the person of Ben Gurion shook hands with Konrad Adenauer’s Germany, establishing diplomatic relations and a friendship that is nothing short of a miracle. How could we not accept the second chance given so undeservedly?

There is a million more reasons to love and to support the only democracy in the Middle East that has brought forth more Nobelists and inventions and start-ups than any other nation; that has been turning swamps and deserts into a garden of Eden for the past 100 years, revived a dead language and integrated more cultures and cuisines than anyone else; a nation where every stone has a history and every family can write a book; where despite all the pain, every person has a song and a dream to rise again and bring beauty to the world.

But at the end of the day, the deep bond we have with the people of Israel has to do with connecting to the God of Israel. This bond doesn’t depend on the weather. It doesn’t depend on politics. It doesn’t depend on mainstream opinion. It’s a heart connection. It’s a love story.

It's been too long. We have so much to catch up.