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What’s your earliest memory of something smelling good? I mean really good? Mine is the now long departed Colonial Bakery in Muncie, Indiana. We took a field trip there in early elementary school, but even driving by, the aroma of plain, soft white bread baking was intoxicating for a pudgy young boy like me! It ministered to my senses and my soul. 

The Colonial smell has never been topped, but it has been challenged. As I’ve traveled and lived in various parts of the Muslim world, food in general and bread in particular, has been a consistent component of the joy a place and its people bring. 

In northern Jordan, I discovered that fresh baked pita delights whether it holds shawarma or boiled eggs. During a summer in Izmir, Turkey, one of our breakfast chores involved a two minute walk to the local bakery where I traded 50 cents for a loaf so fresh it was nearly too hot to hold! 

A short bike ride from our home in Holland, an immigrant bakery introduced me to the rest of the tasty corpus of Turkish bread. 

Though I found it in Fresno and it’s at the edge of what many of us might call “bread,” Ethiopian Injera is wonderfully sour and spongy. 

Chapatis baked on the inside wall of a tandoor in Pune, India cheered my team after a two hour train ride went pear-shaped and lasted until midnight! 

High on the very long list of things that make Malaysia wonderful, Roti Canai is bread at another level and a favorite of my friends who love that land and people fiercely. 

Since Jesus called himself the Bread of Life and Paul says his followers are the aroma of Christ, with bread on your mind, I have a two fold challenge today: 

1. Bake one of the breads. Smell the smells and pray for the people. (I’m planning for this one. Feel free to join me.) Send me pics so I can pray with you! 

2. Go buy one of the breads, smell the smells, share the bread and THE Bread with Muslims in a neighborhood nearby or city far away. (I’m dreaming of a roti spree in a downtown KL street market with the aforementioned!)

This Muslim Connect email is emerging as I sit in a Q & A session at a big church with Larry Osborn. Do you know of him? The guy’s pastored a cool church for decades and has the scars to show it. He also seems to have the sort of humility (with an amusing dose of cynicism) you love to see in long-term followers of Jesus. I’d encourage you to buy one of his books and watch some talks on YouTube.

Fascinating and Heartbreaking Migration Data Points

Increased numbers
According to the UNHCR, as of April 14, 2024, a total of 48,618 refugees arrived in Europe via one of the Mediterranean routes. Of these, 46,629 used one of the three main sea routes and 1,379 came overland. An estimated 473 died or went missing trying to reach Europe.

Increased deaths
According to international media outlet Deutsche Welle, a total of 8,565 migrants died in 2023, 20% more than in 2022 and the highest total since 2014. The Mediterranean remains the deadliest route with more than 3,100 deaths. A little more than fifty percent of the deaths worldwide resulted from drownings.

Who’s Hosting Syrian Refugees?
Statista reports the top three nations hosting Syrian refugees in 2022 are in the Middle East: Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan which collectively hosted over 5 million Syrians. In Europe in 2022, Germany, Sweden, and Austria hosted the largest number of Syrians with a combined total of nearly 708,000 people. 

Beautiful Image
Violins, violas, and cellos made from the wood of boats used by refugees to reach Italy were premiered at Milan’s La Scala opera house in a concert performed as a tribute to those who perished trying to reach Europe. The violins used in the performance were made by inmates at one of Italy’s high-security prisons. The performers at La Scala hope to perform at other concert halls across Europe.

Thank you once again to the good folks at Dimitrov Research Center for the Crescent Reading email from which these points were drawn. 

I just returned with the family from 50 hours on the road for two precious days with my mom in Indiana and an amazing four minutes of total solar eclipse. 

A trip such as this, like a microcosm for life, doesn’t happen without some offense, resulting in a need for forbearance or even forgiveness. I need it for sub-par attitude and driving decisions. Similarly I need to forgive the parade float driver who gave my son a light up whistle! 

Forgiveness, both asking for it and extending it, is a big part of Ramadan, which has just finished. Abeda Ahmedsays, “Throughout Ramadan, the dua (prayer) that we make the most is, “O Allah, you are Forgiving and love forgiveness, so forgive me. . . .”

The Quran also encourages Muslims to pardon those who’ve wronged them and to endure patiently and forgive, saying, “surely this is a resolve to aspire to.”

While Muslims are taught to pursue the forgiveness of God through diligent and timely prayer, the Bible tells us we’re freely forgiven through the sufficiency of Jesus’s death. At the very center of our faith is the conviction that a person can’t earn the forgiveness of God. We can only appropriate what is graciously offered. 

That said, Jesus taught and taught us to pray, in a way that links our willingness and capacity to forgive with our saving faith. John Piper comments on this, “What destroys us is the settled position that we are not going to forgive, and we have no intention to forgive, and we intend to cherish the grudge. . . . It feels good. . . . because he legitimately wronged me.”

As I was writing this, I was convicted of the need to forgive a brother. Maybe someone comes to mind you need to forgive as well. Please take a minute to post your desire to forgive them on this google doc. Be as discreet as is prudent. As others visit the page, they’ll be invited to pray with you for grace to forgive. 

Who’s your favorite person in the Bible? (After Jesus, of course!) One of mine is Cornelius. Luke makes quite a deal of him in Acts as the head of the household through which the good news bounced out into the non-Jewish world. 

You know the story: An angel appears to Cornelius saying, “Your prayers have been heard. Go get a dude named Peter. Here’s his address.” At about the same time, a sheet full of squirmies shows up to peckish Peter. He gets the point, answers a knock at the door and heads off to Caesarea. After a wonderfully awkward introduction, Cornelius says “Lay it on us, brother.” Peter barely begins his talk when the Holy Spirit shows up and all heaven breaks loose! And then, way down the road, you and I get saved! 

Why Cornelius? We can only speculate really, but Luke does give some interesting background on him. He tells us twice that Cornelius prayed and gave to the poor. He adds amazingly, that those things “have come up as a memorial offering before God.” 

God receives an offering from a soldier of the empire oppressing the children of God? Stunning. 

Here’s why this is rolling around in my head today: Ramadan, which wraps up next week, is known for fasting and feasting. It’s also an increased time of praying and giving for Muslims. 

Could there be some Cornelius’s out there named Siddiq, Fatima, or Rasheed who are praying and giving with sincere hearts? Is it possible God might receive their efforts as an offering and send them an angel to say, “Go get this person and listen to what they have to say?”

There are Peters out there. I know it. Women and men, full of grace, love and the Holy Spirit, ready to answer a knock on their door. Please join me in praying that will happen as many times over as God gives you faith for. 

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!

Had any good dreams lately? I mean “while you’re asleep” dreams, not “I dream of world peace,” which is definitely a good dream! Ahead of our sharing the preaching duties at church last Sunday, my wife dreamed that I kept trying to dance with her during the sermon! Happily her righteous anger quickly dissipated once she woke up!

While we might speculate on the origin of hers, dream interpretation and dreams in general, are not big in my stream of Christianity, practical protestants that we are! 

Not so with all Christians and definitely not so with Muslims. In fact, according to Nile Green, dreams and their interpretations have been a part of Muslim culture since the beginning. 

Sunnis believe that the adhan [call to prayer] was not written or said by the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, but rather by one of his companions, Abdullah ibn Zayd, who reportedly had a vision in his dream in which the adhan was revealed to him by God.

In his book, Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World?, Tom Doyle talks about how dreams of Jesus have led many Muslims to faith. 

In this unverified Facebook report, Dr. Mike Licona shares news from an underground Christian ministry in Palestine saying Jesus recently appeared to about 200 men in their dreams in one night! 

I have a dear Muslim background friend who began to follow Jesus after the Lord showed up to him in a vision. I believe it happens. 

I also suspect, with some data and good reason, that it happens more during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting that starts soon. And what if it happens more if we ask God for it? 

If you’re up for trying, join with our friends at Pray4Movement.org to pray for Muslims during this coming Ramadan. And because the Muslim Connect tribe is all about inviting everyone to the party, please consider how you might share the prayer vision with others. 

Have you ever sensed something was up with your body, then welcomed the clarity of a clear diagnosis, even if it wasn’t what you’d hoped for? You may have dealt with that in a very serious manner, but I’m being cheeky with the following:

I’ve been diagnosed, courtesy of Dr. Benedict Beckeld and his article, Islam and the West: Culturally and Theologically Divided, in Merion West: 

I am oikophobic and allophilic, and it’s probably terminal. 

To be clear: Dr. Beckeld is smarter than me, probably by an order of magnitude. But, even though he’s much better looking, he’s also very wordy. I didn’t make it to the end of his article! 

If you’ve even dabbled in Greek, you can parse the words, right? Oiko and phobic = you’re afraid of your house. Allo and philic = you love the other. In common usage, oikophobics aren’t actually afraid of their literal houses, but are given to criticism and rejection of their home culture. Allophilics have an inordinate love for “the other,” those outside their culture or homeland. 

As you might imagine, Dr. Beckeld uses these terms pejoratively, and, with others, tends to equate oikophobia with academia, the liberal elite and political correctness. 

Me? I’m going to print stickers and fridge magnets!! 

I’m kidding. Fridge magnets are expensive. 

Two things I think (seriously, for a moment): 

We should consider these words and their popular use a warning to mobilizers. I can give the impression that I only care about people if they’re non-white and worship Allah. It’s a peculiar risk for people who care about Muslims, immigrants and refugees. But the label shouldn’t stick. 

Secondly, we must be critical of our own cultures, particularly in ways that will render them better. If doing that in biblical ways gets us labeled oikophobic and allophilic, so it goes. 

Finally, is it possible that Jesus by reaching out to Samaritans and sinners, not playing nicely with religious leaders and saying his kingdom was “not of this world” could have been allophonic and oikophobic? He was called worse! 

PS: If you’ve got 30 seconds, please hop over to Denison Forum and comment on the article I had published there today! I’d be big time grateful! Thank you.