When Christians Step Up

When Reema (not her real name) was nine years old, her mother walked out, leaving her to care for her two younger sisters and do the cooking and cleaning for her dad -- in cases of divorce in that society, girls stayed with their fathers, while boys went to their mothers, because men and boys simply didn't do housework or childcare.  She started working full-time when she finished the fifth grade, still juggling her responsibilities at home and eventually earning her high school diploma in night school.  She grew a tough skin.  Nobody messed with her.

An English family befriended her.  She had serious issues with the Islam that she had been born into, but how could she accept that everything she "knew" about Jesus Christ was a lie?  How could there even be a God of love?  How could God have a son?  Yet this family seemed so full of peace and joy … and patience with the mockery and belligerence she invariably defaulted to.  Months and months went by.  She gave no sign that she would ever soften her heart to the audacious truths she was hearing and reading.

It was a hot summer evening.  Reema was sipping tea under the arbor on her English friends' little patio.  As often happened, the whole neighborhood lost power.  In the safety of the darkness, she quietly said:  "I'm ready."  God's promise through Ezekiel proved true:  "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

It had been a long journey to that night-time decision. There would be a long, rocky journey ahead.  But in a city of at least a million people, where a body of Muslim-background believers did not yet exist, one foreign family stepped up to Say Hello.