Monthly Archives: December 2024

Please see the special note at the bottom of this email. 

Often lost in the massive shadow cast by Christmas, today marks the celebration of the demure, mindful, unassuming Boxing Day. It’s origins are murky and the number of explanations for the holiday roughly equals the number of Englishmen you ask about it! 

My favorite Boxing Day activity is along walk with people I love. I first experienced this on the moors around Bradford, England, but now am happy to hoof it with the family on the gravel roads around our southern Colorado home. 

You might not have breathtaking moors, but I hope you’ve had some classically great time with family this Christmas. I know it doesn’t happen every time for everyone, but family moves to the top of the list this time of year. 

That family proximity, intensity and duration at Christmas is where family tends to normally be for many Muslim cultures. Perhaps you’ve been in the midst of it, hanging out with a bunch of folks. Every older woman is either Grandma or Auntie or both! Every older man, gramps or uncle. If a person is within 10 years of you, they’re a cousin, whether related by blood or not. 

The strength of familial bonds can hinder individual Muslims following Jesus. Most of us can probably not imagine the depth of disappointment, nor the weight of shame a potential follower of Jesus anticipates from her family.

On the flip side, is it too much for us to ask God to use those familial bonds to bring whole households to Jesus? There’s precedent in Acts and around the world in our day. How I’d love to see a mom or dad, or maybe an influential uncle find Christ and lead their families to him. 

You may have heard ministry friends refer to Muslims as “cousins.” I like the family connection language. But here’s what I’m hoping for in 2025, so many cousins become sisters and brothers that next Boxing Day finds us all walking, chatting, rejoicing together. 

Special Note: Thank you for reading Muslim Connect. If God has blessed you this year and you’ve found value and maybe even some camaraderie in Muslim Connect, I’d like to ask you to make a year end gift (or even a monthly pledge to this work for 2025!). If you wish, you can give a gift here. (Click in the “Select Designation” window, find me and follow the prompts.) Thank you very much for considering this. 

Please see the special note at the bottom of this email. 

Around our house, the hands down favorite Christmas song is Paul McCartney’s Let It Be. Maybe you’re saying, “Hold on. That’s not a Christmas song.” I wouldn’t fight you over it, but I love that Paul pretty much quotes Mary’s response to Gabriel’s announcement that she’s going to give birth to the Messiah! 

The song is also popular around here because the Mom/Wife of the house does a wicked cover of it and used it as an anchor point in her sermon on Mary’s view of the Nativity this past Sunday. (If you’re inclined, you can watch here. The sermon begins at the 23.36 mark and the song at one hour.)

Mary’s “let it be to me” attitude, along with much more, both biblical and beyond, has earned her unique status for Christians. For Muslims as well.

She is the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran, showing up more often there than in the New Testament. In Sura 3.42, the Quran says, “O Mary, indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds.”

Muslims tend to refer to her as Maryam, but it’s the same mom and the respect is real. I suspect Mary, given the chance, would remind Christians and Muslims alike to focus on the the baby, learn from the man, follow the Messiah. 

Should the Lord open a door for you this season, ask a Muslim about her thoughts on Mary. That conversation might quickly move to you both sharing thoughts on her baby! Sure, Muslims and Christians have important disagreements regarding the nature of that little rascal, but we both love him and his mom. And time spent talking about what we do agree on will not be wasted.

No Muslims to chat with? Join me in this Christmas carol challenge: For the next week, every time you hear a carol you dislike, take a moment to pray that many Muslims will find Jesus in a fresh way this Christmas.

Special Note: Thank you for reading Muslim Connect. In recent months for a variety of reasons, I’ve lost some quite significant donors to the ministry support that helps keep our family going. If God has blessed you this year and you’ve found value and maybe even some camaraderie in Muslim Connect, I’d like to ask you to make a monthly pledge to this work for 2025. I know this is a big ask, but trust you know you answer to God and not to me. If he leads you to make a monthly commitment, you can do so here. (Click in the “Select Designation” window, find me and follow the prompts.) Thank you very much for considering this. 

Please see the special note at the bottom of this email. 

“Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays.” So goes the song and I heartily agree. But you know who won’t be home for Christmas this year? Former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. As his government fell last week, he and his family fled to Russia. He’ll have coal in his stocking for sure, but he’ll do ok with the billions he collected while his countrymen starved. 

Is it a good thing Assad is out of power? Only God really knows, but I’ll be honest with you, I’m glad he’s gone. His list of evil deeds would make the Grinch blush. I pray the forces who sent him packing will be able to rebuild and run the country. But, “Out of the frying pan and into the fire” keeps circling in my brain! 

Here’s what I really wonder about: What conversations are happening around dinner tables among the six million Syrians who’ve fled their country since the civil war began in 2011? Can we even imagine what it must be like?

“Should we return home?” 

“Is this God’s answer to our desperate prayers?” 

“What ‘home’ is there to return to?” 

“Will we be forced to leave what has become something of a home for us and certainly so for the kids?” 

“What do you mean, you’re thinking of taking us away from our school and our friends to go back to some hell hole we don’t even remember?!?” 

“Do the people who look at us in the street or at work wish us well or wish us gone?”

Remember that Jeremiah quote we like, even if we possibly take it out of context? 

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jer. 29.11)

That may apply to Syrians even more than to you and me! And it provides solid scaffolding on which to hang some hopeful prayers. Join me in that? 

Special Note: Thank you for reading Muslim Connect. In recent months for a variety of reasons, I’ve lost some quite significant donors to the ministry support that helps keep our family going. If God has blessed you this year and you’ve found value and maybe even some camaraderie in Muslim Connect, I’d like to ask you to make a monthly pledge to this work for 2025. I know this is a big ask, but trust you know you answer to God and not to me. If he leads you to make a monthly commitment, you can do so here. (Click in the “Select Designation” window, find me and follow the prompts.) Thank you very much for considering this. 

One of the worst things about Christmas: The song “Away in a Manger!” Ask Mary and she’s going to tell you, “Actually a lot of crying he makes!” 

One of the best things about Christmas: Pictures of Jesus in a manger with his mom and dad. This one is my favorite. 

If you grew up as a Christian, you’ve likely been exposed to hundreds (thousands?) of images of Jesus. Some of them amazing, some stunning and some you just wish you could unsee. But likely you don’t think your appreciation or enjoyment of a particular picture of Jesus might lead to idolatry. I think you’re right. 

But the possibility of idolatry seems to be one of the key reasons many Muslims forbid images of Muhammad, and to a lesser degree the other prophets. The prohibition is not overtly in the Quran, but traces back to some statements and actions attributed to Muhammad and recorded in the Hadith. 

When Muhammad has been depicted in art, often by Muslims for Muslims, it is with respect and honor, his face obscured with a veil. Muslims refrain from painting Muhammad’s face because, not knowing what he looked like, any depiction is prone to misrepresentation. 

While the reluctance to depict Muhammad is not difficult to understand, the intensity of response by some to his image being shown sometimes is. My hunch is that most Muslims do not like to see pictures of Muhammad, particularly mocking ones like on the cover of Charlie Hebdo, but also disagree with violent response to them. 

Our challenge is to not lump all Muslims together, but to recognize all Muslims are created by God and creatively love and respect the ones God brings across our paths and minds.