These^ are the words I see as I return to my post that, until now, only had a title. My cousin/best-friend/co-author to this blog left me a nice little message of encouragement, that is now an unintended (on her behalf) contribution to this post. The title to which she was referring actually said "I've been thinking a lot;" but I changed it because that's not very enthralling, especially when most people that probably read this are doing so because of an interesting picture or a pertinent word that caught their attention, in which case, access to my accrued, constipated thoughts would be unprovoking, to say the least. My computer just disagreed with me, insisting that "unprovoking" is not a word... twice, now that I've written it two times, and that red dotted underline is getting on my nerves... Nevertheless, I assure you, IT IS a real word.
See, these inevitable ramblings are why I've resisted (quite easily) writing lately. I don't want readers to be resorted to deciphering a "stream of consciousness," which is about what I would compare this to. I suppose I just haven't had any experiences lately that warranted a post dedicated to them. But I will go on, anyway. After all, you do have the choice of not reading this.
So, Sunday night, after repeated instigation from my mother, I decided to oblige her and accompany my parents to a particular Sunday night service at our church. This service was "particular" in that it included a guest speaker by the name of David LeCompte. Hopefully, I didn't just ruin his ministry/put his life in danger by failing to assign him an alias. I say this because he is a missionary in Muslim countries such as Iran, Russia, and most recently Afghanistan. I'm pretty sure he's ministered in additional Muslim countries, but I can't remember them, and I don't want to record false information.
Fast-forward to the middle of his sermon where he is explaining that as descendants of Ishmael, the Arabs are also special to God and that God has His own plan for them along with the Jews (Isaac's descendants). I suppose I've just never thought about this because no one has ever mentioned it to me, probably because most of society pigeonholes all Muslims as jihad-crazy killing machines. But, as recorded in Genesis 16, they are still descendants of Abram (and Hagar) through Ishmael (even though it was illegitimate) and God promised Hagar that her descendants would be "too numerous to count" (ain't that the truth) haha.
Super-speed fast-forward to Acts 2, and we find the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost in Jerusalem. He (the Holy Spirit) literally came to rest upon the 12 apostles, enabling them to speak in the native tongue of every believer in the city that day. These believers consisted of Parthians/Medes/Elamites (all Iranians); people of Mesopotamia (Syria), Judea (Israel), Cappadocia/Pontus/Phrygia/Pamphylia (Turkey), Rome, Crete, and Arabia (Saudi Arabia). And for climactic effect, I withheld, until now, that between the mentioning of Turkey and Rome were two other nations: Egypt and Libya. In that order. Maybe it's just me, but I find it especially Divine that these two countries were mentioned in this order considering the recent political events and the fact that as soon as the Egyptians decided to overthrow their dictator, so did the Libyans! I also neglected the mention of Cyrene (a part of Libya), which is where Simon the Cyrene was from; he was the one who carried Jesus' cross for him when he fell. All of this is to say that, even on the day of Pentecost, there were Palestinian believers present and that God loves them as much as anyone.
Next he started showing pictures in his powerpoint of some of the Arab people he has encountered throughout his years of ministering. One of them was a picture of 4 little Afghan boys that they found in a bombed-out, abandoned building fighting with dogs over a rotten piece of meat. I really wish I had the pictures he used because I can't do it justice, now. Another picture was of a little girl that looked somewhat like this:
Now, at this point I had been holding back tears the whole time, and it was getting annoying because I DON'T cry, especially in front of people; not to mention, I don't particularly enjoy the lump that manifests itself in my throat after trying to hold myself together... But when he started crying, I about lost it.
I'll admit, I let a few tears and the occasional spastic frown or seemingly possessed face-convulsion slip. But, I mean, there were people around and I've got a reputation to maintain. So, I regained my composure on the outside, and sat through the rest of the sermon wishing I could go to Afghanistan right then and save all of them (a product of that superhero complex I have). He displayed some more heart-strings-pulling photographs somewhat like these:
Another happening he talked about was the overwhelming number of Islamic people these days who are out in middle of the desert minding their own business, sleeping, or doing 1 of there 5 prayers a day, when all of the sudden Jesus himself is appearing to them in dreams or other manifestations and making himself known to them. WHOA!.... I'll say it... I'm jealous. These are legitimate occurrences; seriously, look it up.
Moral of this story... Now I'm probably going to pursue learning Arabic and finding a way to get over there and tell all those people about Jesus.
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