“Stop. Striving!” With hands lifted in worship Sunday
morning, His voice wrapped around me one word at a time, like a father firmly
holding his daughter by the shoulders, fiercely and lovingly meeting her eyes.
Just the day previous, I’d sunk into the seat of my car, lip
upturned and breathed, “God, I don’t want to talk about it now.” I drove away from the mosque, my heart
fighting hard between the emotions of failure and awkwardness, tangling in the
mess of my urgent desire to befriend Muslim women and a growing sense of
hopelessness-turning-apathetic toward their lostness.
I went to the mosque that sunny Saturday morning in response
to an invitation to a women’s conference.
I could only see the soft blue eyes of the tall, veiled woman who had
invited me, but I could see enough to know she was as mid-west American as my
own mother. She shared that they
were going to discuss women’s issues, and I thought this could be an incredible
opportunity to get to know some Muslim women on neutral ground. I’d been praying so hard for
opportunities to get to know Muslim women, and this seemed like an answer to
prayer! “It’s not about religion,” I though, “just women’s issues, which we can
easily all talk about!” I was
excited at the idea and eagerly accepted the woman’s invitation.
I prayed ardently over the time we’d have together and grew
in anticipation as the minutes passed closer and closer toward our coming
together. I pictured us all
sitting in a room talking and laughing, as I’d often done on missions trips,
walls and barriers down. But as I
opened the back door of the mosque, the one only the women can enter through, I
found the women sitting on the carpet-covered floor in the light-less room
where they worshiped.
My heart sank.
No circle. No talking or
laughing. They sat silently
listening to the imam speak from another room. I slid down the wall by two teenage girls and bowed my head
in prayer. The blue-eyed woman
leaned over and explained apologetically that this was the first time they’d
tried to do the conference, and the women’s speaker backed out last minute. In response, the whole congregation was
having a conference that day, thus, the separation and distant, unseen
speaker.
I sat long and listened. I prayed. My
back and legs began aching from the unfamiliar position, so I shifted and
prayed longer. I warred off
disappointment and the restless urge to leave. This seemed so pointless (and endless!), but I argued myself
into sitting and praying longer.
How many times had I gone halfway around the world for opportunities
like this? How many days had I
been praying to understand and to encounter their world, and here I sat in the
middle of it. In my own
backyard. (I tried to set my
expectations aside to remember that God alone can move mountains, and prayer
alone can move the hand of God.
Perhaps God had sent me only to pray. Only? It is, after all, my most
underappreciated yet most mighty weapon.
What greater gift could I give the women that day but to pray over
them?)
After nearly two hours of teaching on how one’s words,
actions and heart can earn good deeds and thereby blessings in this life and in
paradise, the imam concluded and every woman stretched long her relief. Eyes squinting toward the fresh light
pouring through the opened door, we walked out of the light-less room into the
women’s common area where lunch awaited.
With kids running and chasing, laughing and calling to one another, we
piled plates and sat down to eat – for the women, a homemade rice and chicken
dish from one of the Albanian women; for the children, delivery pizza, Cheetos
and chocolate donuts.
I sat with the teenage girls and the blue-eyed woman who happily
engaged conversation about school, family, marriage and future plans. Just as the imam had instructed in his
message, though, they did not ask me any questions about my beliefs or myself
but rather focused politely on their purpose, inquiring only if I had questions
about Islam or anything that had been shared.
I gently asked a few questions and watched the women all
enthusiastically interject responses.
Their answers included comparisons that manifested their own questions
and misunderstanding about Christianity, which they rightly assumed was my
perspective. It was obvious they
were not asking me to respond, so I held my words close, close enough for them
to sear me with the heat of uncertainty.
I squirmed inside, encountering my own discomfort at not even knowing
how to respond in a way they would understand. I didn’t want a debate. I just wanted to get know these women. I wasn’t looking for conversions, just
friends. I wanted to share Jesus-in-me
as naturally as we shared greetings and glances and rice and chicken. But walls were up and I felt the strength
to climb drained from me like air from a balloon.
The children grew restless waiting for their promised craft
time, bringing a close to our conversation. I stuffed my angst out of the women’s sight and profusely
thanked them for inviting me to come.
I exchanged phone numbers with the blue-eyed woman and begged my feet
against the compulsion to run as I approached the door.
I sank into the safety of my car, turned the key and drove
away. I was emotionally and spiritually depleted as I breathed, “God, that was
awful. I don’t ever want to do
that again, and I don’t want to talk about it now.” I wanted to leave and never look back. But she was there. That woman who didn’t understand Jesus. And the other one who felt so uncertain
of eternity. And the other one who
unknowingly revealed to me questions she had, for which I couldn’t account.
Oswald Chambers writes,
Our natural inclination is to be so
precise—trying always to forecast accurately what will happen next—that we look
upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We think that we must reach some predetermined
goal, but that is not the nature of the spiritual life. The nature of the
spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty.
Certainty is the mark of the
commonsense life—gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be
certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what
tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it
should be an expression of breathless
expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.
As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to
us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises. When we become simply a
promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies. That
is not believing God—it is only believing our belief about Him.
As worship unfolded the following morning, the Holy Spirit
softly opening my closed heart-doors, my belief about God dissipated in a refined image of who He is.
Faithful. Loving. Not willing that any would perish. Not within the confines of the
“commonsense life” or “particular beliefs” or even my “precise and accurate
forecasts.” He works far beyond
what we can see, and as I sat in that mosque, He was working in those precious
women, and in me, glorious uncertainties far beyond what I could behold. The music crescendoed, my vain efforts
melted and I was held breathless.
Held by the one who breathes life and authors life and freely gives Life, life to the full.
“Stop striving.”
He held me. The
messy bundle of me and all my good-hearted, completely self-induced efforts and
striving and expectations. I clung
to them as if they were a part of me.
“We’re to go into the ‘highways and byways’ aren’t we?” I cried. “How will they know unless someone tells them? And how will someone tell them unless I
go to them?” I shuddered in
conviction that pushed far deeper than my own discomfort or an uncomfortable
experience.
Then He breathed His answer like a warm breeze over me,
calming my soul. “ ‘It’s not by
might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ ” says the Lord. “You don’t have to try so hard. Simply do what I’ve placed before you
and trust that in the right time, I’ll bring the right opportunity to you. ‘Whatever you do, whether you eat or
drink, or whatever your hands find to do, do it all for the My glory.’ ”
And with that, I clung to Him as He severed the good
hearted, self induced efforts and striving and expectations. I let go of the pressure I’d put on
myself to find her and renewed my
trust in Him - that as surely as He
called, He will lead.
