Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Sometimes...
“Sometimes I stay up all night praying and reading Al Qur’an. It’s more important for me to do that than to sleep. I pray for my family.”
Her capacity to care, to look beyond herself, to forgive and to remain strong and dignified despite the hurt that she has been put through in recent months astound me. Unlike others that I’ve met in similar positions, her prayers are not that God will punish the one who has made her feel like she is “bleeding inside” but that he would realise his fault and be restored.
Grace.
She speaks to me of dreams that she has had since she was a teenager. Some of them she feels warned her of the pain ahead. Almost every time we talk her eyes well up with tears; memories of the father and sisters she had to leave behind in her home country, the sadness she feels for a daughter who has cut herself off from the other girls at school because she realised their bad influence, her worries about a young son who is turning away from his father.
I listen and I pray.
It’s not a time to tell her that reading Al Qur’an will not help, any more than it is a time to tell her that she needs to repent of her sins and invite Jesus into her heart. Somehow God is sustaining her, and is hearing her prayers. How else can I explain a character that I can only describe as “Christ-like” even though she does not know the one that she resembles?
Her capacity to care, to look beyond herself, to forgive and to remain strong and dignified despite the hurt that she has been put through in recent months astound me. Unlike others that I’ve met in similar positions, her prayers are not that God will punish the one who has made her feel like she is “bleeding inside” but that he would realise his fault and be restored.
Grace.
She speaks to me of dreams that she has had since she was a teenager. Some of them she feels warned her of the pain ahead. Almost every time we talk her eyes well up with tears; memories of the father and sisters she had to leave behind in her home country, the sadness she feels for a daughter who has cut herself off from the other girls at school because she realised their bad influence, her worries about a young son who is turning away from his father.
I listen and I pray.
It’s not a time to tell her that reading Al Qur’an will not help, any more than it is a time to tell her that she needs to repent of her sins and invite Jesus into her heart. Somehow God is sustaining her, and is hearing her prayers. How else can I explain a character that I can only describe as “Christ-like” even though she does not know the one that she resembles?
0 comments :
Post a Comment
