Lessons

We met a woman in a head-covering that symbolized her faith in Islam. I feel terrible for forgetting her name but I think her name was Aileen. I asked her a few questions about her faith to get to know more about what she believed and why she believed it. At first, she wasn't too responsive but over a bit of time she began to open up and talk more. I don't know why she opened up but I think it was because she may have felt that we would genuinely listen to her. She seemed to know where we were coming from. She knew about the Gospel, that Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, entered time and space as we know it to fulfill the mystery of the Gospel so that the selfish can stand before the selfless without facing the consequences. In turn, I asked her how to achieve salvation in the Islamic faith and she told me that she did not know because she was still learning. At that moment, I wondered why she believed in her faith. The practical purpose of any major faith like Islam, Judaism or Hinduism is to achieve salvation. To take on a faith without knowing how to achieve salvation in that faith is kind of like jumping into a random car that you don't know where its going. I don't know why she calls herself Muslim without knowing the practical purpose of that faith. I found it rather amazing that she could latch onto something without knowing a key component to it. And it leads me to wonder whether other people are the same in a similar way. I wondered whether we latch onto things even though we don't know the consequences of those things or even critical components that we ought to know about.

Afterward, another man named William who went by the name of Country came over. Aileen and her sister called him over because they thought well of him and they thought that we might enjoy him. He was a very passionate preacher in our faith. He said many wise phrases but the one that stuck out to me was his personal story about how he spent most of his life running away from God. He told us that God never gave up on him but that made me think whether I was running away from God. Another thing that stood out for me was how much he understood God's holiness. We all read about how God is holy but I think some people are shaken up or life-directionally transformed by it more so than others. I just felt that his heart was more open to the Will of God in such a way that allowed him to supernaturally perceive a little more of God's holiness in ways that I fell very short of. This was another reminder for me to repent and earnestly seek God's face all the more in the midst of my complacency and self-idolatry.

On the one hand, we met someone who recognized the sin in and around himself to worship and glorify God. On the other, we met someone who latched onto a faith, the apparent basics of which she did not understand. In light of the former case, I wonder whether she was also running away from God, that in her case it was not so much about latching onto something else as it was about choosing anything but submitting to God. I see a part of myself in the latter case as I continue to strive to deny myself to live like the former.