Today was a day to explore some of the land of Bahrain and enjoy it’s people. Jamie Ongna brought me around to some of the sites. Jamie is in the picture below.
In the morning I visited the Grand Mosque in Bahrain and took a tour of the facility. It was my first conversation with a woman wearing the complete Muslim head covering, with only her eyes showing. It was also my first time in a mosque. This building is very beautiful – simple, yet intricate.
You can read on your own about the meaning of the architecture, but what intrigued me was how this woman shared about Islam and Christianity – pointing out on several occasions how they accept Jesus as a great prophet and how much there is similar between the two religions, careful not to point out the differences.
To some degree, she is right – we both believe in one God, we both believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, and a some other things. But I also discovered some differences. Of course, there are the obvious ones (Christians believe Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins, the unique Son of God, and the one in whom all the fullness of the Deity resides, while Muslims believe Jesus was a great prophet but not the Son of God.), but I was intrigued by some smaller differences: when praying, for example, there is a very strict order in body and in words for how Muslims pray. Failure to follow the pattern exactly, she explained, would mean that the prayers would not be heard.
It made me wonder about the nature of grace and mercy for Muslims. Something I’ll want to explore later.
Jamie then drove me out on the coastal causeway to the border with Saudi Arabia. On the Bahrain side there is a little restaurant and tower to look across the border (an identical tower and restaurant is on the Saudi side). This was as close as we could go. It was the first time I experienced being forbidden to enter a country. Americans cannot enter without a formal invitation from someone in authority. If we had that, Jamie would have been forbidden to drive and she would have been forced to completely cover herself. As one worker in Saudi would later tell me, whenever he crosses the border, it is as if a veil descends on the land.Lunch brought another Turkish meal of kabob, hummus and bread, and guests Sunnel and Regina, who I met at church on Friday. See that post for a picture of Sunnel, he came to NW because of the influence of John Hubers.
The evening was spent with a Christian teacher I met in church, and a Bahrainee friend of his. We went to - where else? - APPLEBEES! It was a wonderful encounter with someone raised in Islam and on the island and who had all kinds of questions about the Bible and Christianity. The two men read a few verses each week of the Bible and discuss them. As the Lord would have it, the verses they had read for that week were the exact verses I had read in my morning devotions! The end of John 3. We had a great talk about what Christians think it means to be born again and that the Father had placed all things in the hands of the Son.On Sunday, I will be preaching for the American Mission Hospital worship service and the evening service at the English Language Congregation.
