Monthly Archives: March 2024

We’ve come to the Mitford party about 20 years late. My wife and I recently started reading the super popular series, Mitford Years, and at three chapters in, I’m wondering to what degree I should be a pastor like Father Tim. (I’ve got the portly part down pat.)

If you remember the very start of the series, Father Tim was blessed by his fasting on Good Friday. Perhaps you’re blessed to be fasting today as we commemorate Jesus’s death. 

Having most of us grown up knowing the “rest of the story,” it’s impossible for all but those with the best imaginations, to put ourselves the disciples’ shoes or in the mind of Mary on that fateful day. 

The great experiment has reached it’s tragic and for some foregone conclusion: He was a fine, if too feisty, rabbi. As the Muslims would say down the road, a prophet worth reading and emulating, but no Messiah. 

But even more difficult to comprehend is the magnitude, the pervasiveness of the difference that death was making. I don’t have space here to describe that impact. (I sometimes say that when I don’t really know how to describe something!) Paul’s words in Colossians 1.19-20 richly suffice, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Ah, how I want our Muslim cousins around the planet to know this. Peace has been made. Reconciliation accomplished. Fast and feast during Ramadan out of joyous devotion to God, but you need not offset your sin nor earn his favor. 

The death the holy one died, he died for you, too. 

PS: As Rev. Lockridge reminds us, Sunday is coming! I’d appreciate your prayers as I preach on Easter this Sunday for the first time ever! 

As I write it’s Mother’s Day throughout the Arab world, which means it’s Mother’s Day in Gaza. I can’t even imagine the sorrow of tens of thousands of Muslim moms who’ve lost children, husbands, parents and precious nieces and nephews since the travesty of Oct. 7th. 

Surely the loss of life and livelihood devastates hope. It’s one thing to persist in pursuing a light at the end of the tunnel, but when the light has been all but snuffed out, how do you keep going?

There was another holiday in the Middle East this week: Nowruz, or Persian New Year. Although it predates Islam, with origins in Zoroastrianism, tons of Muslims enjoy this celebration of Spring. Of course this is a problem in “our way is the only way” cleric-run Iran! The Taliban frowns on it in Afghanistan too. 

In case you’ve not been reading Muslim Connect for over a year, a goldfish is one of the traditional symbols of Nowruz. I encourage you to buy one (If you buy a feeder fish, you’ll give it a longer life than it might otherwise have had!), name it Nowruz and each time you feed it, pray for Persians to find the abundant life Jesus died for them to enjoy.

Finally, as you probably know, we’re almost half way through Ramadan. Rather, Muslims worldwide are. This time of daily fasting and nightly feasting means so much to our Muslim cousins. 

In I Kings 8, Solomon prayed, as he dedicated the temple, that God would hear and answer the prayers of non-Jews directed toward that place. As Muslims up their prayer game during Ramadan, please join me in asking God to hear and answer their prayers for forgiveness and deliverance that “all the people of the earth will come to know and fear him.”

Can you indulge me a little trip down memory land for this edition of Muslim Connect? 

Many years ago, during a three month stint in Bangkok, I got a crazy fun opportunity to hop over to Indonesia with my boss, mentor and hero, Steve Hawthorne. We were scouting locations for future “Joshua Project” research teams in Medan and Banda Aceh. 

I remember chatting in our local host’s home our first evening in the country. The TV had been burbling along in the background, when suddenly it had our host’s full attention: His eyes were glued to the set where a sheik of some sort was making an announcement. He finished his speech and our host turned to us, “Now we eat!” The end of the day’s fast had been proclaimed. 

He took some tea and a bit of food, offered us the same, and I experienced my first ever iftar, the ceremonial fast breaking at the end of each day of Ramadan. It is, if I’m honest with you, one of my favorite parts of the whole event! 

A few years later while kicking around Frankfurt, Germany learning about Muslim immigrants there, some guys at a mosque invited us back in the evening for iftar. That’s an invitation I’ll very rarely pass on! 

We showed up, sat down and awaited the time when evening, and therefore fast breaking, would officially arrive. When it did, our hosts, channeling their ancient Beduin forebears, insisted we take the tea and dates first. So I, the dude with a half-drunk water bottle in my backpack, ate before the guys who’d not sipped since a long ago sunrise. Hospitality worth emulating. 

My favorite iftar so far occurred not long ago when some buds and I hosted a meal for our young, asylum-seeking friends in Catania, Sicily. With no money in their pockets and their moms, mosques and favorite Ramadan munchies far away over the sea, those guys could use some blessings. 

We borrowed tables and chairs, commandeered a little piazza, made soup, and bought fresh baked bread. We invited all our new friends and together we thanked God for the simple joys of good food, multi-colored friends and the hope of better times to come. 

Do you ever think how good it is that God loves people we can’t or maybe don’t? This morning I’m thankful that God loves deaf people. I’m acquainted with one or two deaf people, but close to none. 

When you look across the landscape of unengaged people groups (those who have no one living among them working to reproduce disciples), many are deaf communities in otherwise engaged peoples. The broader group might be massively underserved, but the deaf community within that group has no one telling the good news of Jesus. 

Mike Latsko, who heads up a cadre of people focused on seeing the remaining ~1600 unengaged people groups engaged, says, “5% of our list, that’s around 80 groups, are distinct deaf communities or peoples.” 

You probably know that deaf communities have legitimate cultural identity that endures after following Jesus. On the sadder side, they also experience isolation from their broader cultural context. 

So what can be done to get Jesus people sharing with pre-Jesus people who are deaf? Well, since the “Shane learns Arabic” ship has most likely sailed, I’m probably not going to learn Arabic sign language either! Further, it’s often very difficult for the non-deaf to connect at a heart level with deaf people. 

Here are three encouraging signs: 
An alliance of Bible translation organizations called illumiNations includes 400 sign languages on their list of translations to be finished by 2033!

Door International is translating scripture into sign languages and also training deaf people to go two by two into deaf communities around the world to plant deaf churches! 80 of these teams have been sent so far. 

Finally, this simple, short, winsomevideo from the International Mission Board shows five things newbies like me need to know about Deaf Peoples.

As Ramadan begins this Monday, March 11th, please join me in praying for these ministries and the millions of deaf Muslims who’ll not hear the call to prayer nor that Jesus loves them. May someone show them soon. Please pray as well for faithful Muslim Connect reader Shelly who’s working on translating the Bible into Mexican Sign Language! Go Shelly!