One of the really great things about Uswaa is the relationship between the Christians and the Muslims. There are five mosques throughout the Uswaa parish and Muslim people are interspersed throughout the neighborhoods of people that we are out visiting. They are as eager to greet me/we pastors as anyone else in the village is.
Muslims and Christians get married to each other all of the time. Sometimes one of the pair will convert to Christianity, sometimes to the Islamic faith. Sometimes they each stay within the community of faith that the came from. We know of one man who married a Muslim woman, she converted to Christianity, but on his farm he does not raise pigs out of respect for her family.
Peaceful and respectful is how I would describe the relationship between these two groups of people in our little corner of the mountain.
One girl came along with us on our youth safari and we were told that she was formerly Muslim. I asked when she converted and she reported that she had been very sick, very very sick. Her Christian friends came and prayed for her and she was healed and then she became Christian.
It is not all perfect. I met a woman on Tuesday who is married to a Muslim man and consequently married into an entirely Muslim family. She remains Christian and is faithful in her worship attendance and church involvement, but life is difficult because she doesn’t have support. Today I met another woman who snuck into the home of a couple that we were visiting, she wasn’t related to them, she just saw we were there and found it to be an opportunity to speak with Christian pastors. She told us that she is Muslim on the outside only, but she remains a Christian in her heart. She said that if her husband knew that she wanted to be Christian he would divorce her, but she wanted the pastor’s to just know what was in her heart. I think it just opened the door for her to be honest with herself about what was in her heart.
“Salaam” is a very common greeting here. I hear it from both the Christians and the Muslims. “How was your day?” someone will ask, “salaam” is the response. How did you sleep? Followed by an emphatic “Salaam Kabisa.” Salaam is an Arabic word that remains an important part of life and relationships in this place. Isn’t it perfect that the word means peace?
This is such a refreshing attitude about faith and life. I often find our notion in America about what Islam is and who its followers are to be distorted, not to mention disturbing. Here, there is mutual respect. When a Christian neighbor dies, the Muslims are there to bring condolences and attend the Christian burial service. The same is true when a Muslim dies.
Some of the Muslims have a mark in the middle of their forehead and someone was explaining to us that they get that from always being down on their knees in prayer, they also said Christians could learn a lot about prayer from them. I tend to agree.
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
I offer a prayer of thanksgiving every time I read your writing, consider what you have shared, and marvel at your capacity to minister through this electronic forum. Thanks be to God!
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