Monthly Archives: September 2023

I was at a conference once that included a lengthy prayer time sitting on the floor. When it finished and we all stood up, one of my friends remained seated. We thought, “Wow, he’s really spiritual!” Then a song started, his head snapped up and we realized he’d been snoozing! 

Surely you’ve never fallen asleep in a corporate prayer time, then awoken to realize now you don’t know what has been prayed for and what hasn’t! Nor have you slept in when you could have been praying. I’ve done both. 

I love that in the Muslim pre-dawn call to prayer between “Hurry to the prayer. Hurry to salvation” and the last “God is great,” the muezzin sneaks in “Prayer is better than sleep.” 

During the Luke 22 prayer time in the Garden of Gethsemane, some of the participants slept while one of them prayed. Luke writes that Jesus got up from his knees ready to face his short and traumatic future while the disciples slept in grief.

Without doubt, sometimes sleep is the best thing we can do. But in the Garden, and often in life, it’s better to pray than sleep. 

Bon Courage, my friends: Your prayers for Muslims are heard. If you’re praying, you’re doing it right! Whether you wake up early, stay up late or pray in the car taking kids to practice, the God of Heaven and Earth, the one who stayed up himself and prayed in the Garden, hears your prayers. And they are answered beyond what you can ask or imagine. 

Can I give you a specific people group to pray for this week? The Bozo people, a barely engaged group in West Africa will get a little more attention than usual this week because I’ll be briefly speaking about them at the Healing Nations annual banquet. I could sure use your prayers, but even more, the Bozo. 

If you didn’t catch last week’s email, “To Bidet or Not Bidet,” you may want to give it a look! It’s a rare bit of bathroom humor in Muslim Connect! 

Sometimes I like to ponder what Muslims have given non-Muslims: 

Coffee, numbers, hospitality, long, flowy shirts that camouflage middle-aged tummies! 

And the bidet. 

To be clear, the idea of post-poo cleansing with water is too generic to really think some one person came up with the idea first. I suppose the French might like to think it was them, and to be sure the Japanese have taken the bidet to a whole other level!

But for me, it was the Muslims of Jordan who provided an introduction to this new form of hygiene. In the Indiana of my youth there were still more functioning out-houses than bidets! When I spent my first post-college summer in Jordan I was faced with a plethora of new sights, sounds, smells and ideas. The transplantation of the little dish sprayer from the kitchen sink to the floor next to the squatty potty was not the least of them. 

Why is this a deal for Muslims? Well, one (sometimes disputed) Quranic verse and several Hadiths indicate that God is happy when his people keep it clean down there. And practically, it’s hard to argue this question: If a bird randomly went poo on your hand, would you feel better washing with water or just wiping it off with paper?

When I wonder why non-Muslim Americans don’t use bidets, my best guess is that we’ve bought the marketing. Companies can sell toilet paper over and over, but a bidet only once. That, and if you weren’t raised rinsing, it’s a small physical step, but a pretty big mental one! 

Since I’ve pledged to not ask you to do anything I’m not willing to do, this email is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive! But I will say this, I’ve never know anyone who went the way of the bidet to regret the shift or hustle back to TP.

Twin tragedies have rocked the Muslim world in the past week. You’ve probably seen the news:

An earthquake in Morocco on September 8th killed up to 3000 people in Marrakesh and the Atlas Mountains. Recovery efforts are still underway as many people suffer without food and shelter. 

On Monday, September 11th, an intense rain storm in Libya caused two dams to fail, resulting in a wall of water that destroyed a third of the coastal town of Derna. The mayor estimates up to 20,000 dead. 

As you’d imagine, the suffering in the aftermath of these events is intense. The remoteness of the Moroccan villages and the political instability in Libya hamper rescue and recovery efforts. 

To help build a concerted prayer effort, I’d like to invite you to join me in putting the following blurb in your church bulletin or newsletter this weekend or next: 

In response to the devastating earthquake in Morocco (~3000 dead) and flooding in Libya (up to 20,000 dead), please pray for rescue and relief workers. Pray for food, water and shelter to get to those in need. Ask God to breathe hope where despair presently reigns. Ask God to guide the US and each of us to respond as he desires.

If God nudges you to give in response to either the Moroccan earthquake or the Libyan flood, Team Expansion is a trusted partner with connections at work on the ground who are trained in trauma-informed care. Click the link above for a Morocco page. If you’d like your gift to go to Libyan response, use that page, but put “Libya Flood Relief” in the notes section.

I just finished the most amazing book and can’t wait to tell you about it. Dave Eggers wrote The Monk Of Mokha to tell the story of Mohktar Alkhanshali and his unlikely and perilous quest to restart the Yemeni coffee industry. 

Mohktar, a Yemeni-American, grew up in San Fransisco where he muddled his way through school and several dead-end jobs. Then an epiphany, which he attributes to God, focused his life on coffee, particularly to “resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee.” 

His rollicking journey from no money and no experience to selling coffee for $200 a pound is Hollywood worthy and deeply inspiring. 

I love this book for a many reasons, including:

• Muslims are treated like normal people. Mohktar is a hero, but starts off a bratty kid. The Yemeni farmers seem backward in some ways, but are really just trying to make it. The political powers that be, playing out their dramas on Yemeni soil, are like powers often are: evil. 

• I appreciated the insights into life in a country suffering as Yemen has. The effects of the war are felt by all, but in different ways: In loss of life, loss of freedom or an increased insecurity of livelihood. In the midst of what we’d might be inclined to label tribulation, Yemenis continue to live as best they can.

• I am deeply challenged to consider how badly I want to see the Gospel go everywhere. Mokhtar was jailed, relentlessly sick and financially leveraged to nearly everyone he knew, but he remained determined to make Yemeni coffee happen. What discomfort am I willing to endure to see the great commission completed and to hear, “Well done, son,” from my Father?

Oh, yeah, and there’s the coffee! Along with Yemen, coffee serves as one of the key characters in the book! Brew a nice cup and if you have any money left, buy The Monk of Mokha.