Six years ago, yesterday, I woke up early (it was also a Tuesday) to get ready and join a group of high school kids to pray before school started. Much as I do every day, I was watching the TV as I got ready and I remember when the regular programming switched to a special news report of a plane that had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers. What a horrible accident, I thought. I remember watching the TV screen while the news reporter was talking to some eyewitness and I SAW the second plane fly into the other tower. I realized then it wasn’t an accident, but couldn’t wrap my head around what was really happening. I went to meet with the high school kids and we prayed for our school and the students… and whatever was happening in New York City. It wasn’t until I was on my way to work that I began hearing that the Golden Gate Bridge had been shut down. I got to work and heard that air traffic had been grounded. What in the world was going on?
Well, we know what happened subsequently and what has been going on since.
I was fortunate to go to Israel a few years ago. I saw a beautiful land and people caught up in such strife and pain. I went with a small mission agency seeking to bring reconciliation to the region. We met with Christians, some up in Cana and others in the West Bank. They were a beautiful people, caught in the middle, between the Jew and Muslim, in a hard place. My heart broke for that people and that region as we looked out over Jerusalem from the Garden of Gethsemane and I heard the Muslim call to prayer go out from the many minarets throughout the city. I, too, wept for Jerusalem and thus began God’s work on breaking my heart for the Muslim world.
Prior to that, if you had asked me, I would have chosen any other people and people group to minister to, but not the Muslim. It was too hard a ministry, they were too hard to understand. Of course, I hadn’t really tried to understand. But God had other plans, and He began putting that people on my heart. I admit, I didn’t like it. It was too foreign, too uncomfortable a thought. Those “people” had attacked us!! Those “people” were extremists!! Those “people” were determined to eliminate us!! How FOOLISH I was to consider them UNWORTHY of my time and prayer!! But God was gracious enough to break my hard heart and show me they were equally in need of His saving grace as I had been and that He desired their worship as much as He desired mine.
And that brings us to this Thursday, September 13, the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim’s month of fasting to commemorate Mohammed’s receiving the Qur’an. The Muslim will fast from sunrise to sundown for 30 days as part of their fourth pillar of Islam.
I share ALL of this to offer anyone who is interested an opportunity to make the Muslim a focus of prayer during the next 30 days.
This website has some excellent information and resources. And you can download a prayer booklet to help you pray through the 30 days.
God is at work in the Muslim world. He is being revealed through visions and dreams and through the witness of brave souls who risk their lives to share this great Good News. Can we not join them through prayer in this good work?
All Things Elda 