Yesterday I arrived at the house of one of my dearest friends to find her looking sad and heavy-hearted. She and her husband have been having significant struggles with finances, joblessness, infertility, and an adoption that fell through. It seems they are experiencing grief upon grief these days. It didn’t take much pressing to get her to share with me how hard life feels for her right now. She looked at me and said, “I keep praying and asking God to show me the way.” I hesitated but finally responded, “Jesus says He is the way.” This led into a conversation about the Fall, sin entering the world, and the need for us to be reconciled to God. She very confidently said that if she sins, she just has to make it right by apologizing to the person she hurt and praying and asking God for forgiveness so she can be made clean again. I told her we both agreed that God is more holy than we could ever imagine. But I asked her how we could ever in a million years think that we could make ourselves clean before that kind of holiness. She didn’t respond but simply sat quietly. I said, “It would require perfection. A perfect life. Jesus was the only one who ever managed that.” Our conversation was full of love and grace toward one another and when I left her house, she gave me a tight hug and thanked me for being her friend.
But the Swahili people in this location are deeply tied to Islam and the mere suggestion that we would put our hope in Jesus for salvation is highly inflammatory and even seems to cause great fear. There is a bondage here that causes tremendous defensiveness and offense when the topic is raised. Women especially are taught to not even engage with ideas outside of those they’ve been raised with, much less think critically about them. Please pray for the Swahili people that the Spirit would open the door for more of these conversations to take place. Pray that hearts would be opened to the Truth that there is no way for any human to make themselves clean before God. Pray that would stir in them a desire to find a different way. Pray that would lead them to see that Jesus IS the way.
