Scattered thoughts... sort of little plastic water bottles lying hither and thon.

So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.  Acts 10:34-35

Yesterday we did our thing, our “highlight and lowlight” of the day during the halftime of the South Korea/Mexico game. We were hanging out in a fancy fine coffee shop with the best air conditioning on “Two Sides Street,” the main drag of Ankawa.

Ryan and Charity pretty much agreed that the whole day was quite amazing, especially wandering around the 6000-year-old Citadel. Charity particularly had been hoping for a big scenic overview of the city all week. My highlight sounded like a lowlight, but it wasn’t. In one of the tiny museums tucked into the adobe buildings there was an old black and white photo of a small Kurdish village. And for some reason the whole village was all dressed up and standing in front of their homes. And the English description of the photo detailed how Saddam Hussein had razed this village, as well as almost 5,000 others. And somehow the piercing of this moment, opened a hole in my heart and His love poured into the rawness. And I experienced the LORD God’s love for the Kurdish people in such a huge wave that it took my breath away.

  

And I am actually reading a couple other books besides endless International Baccalaureate manuals detailing complex instruction in painstaking detail. This International Baccalaureate program “offers high quality and challenging educational programmes for a worldwide community of schools, aiming to create a better, more peaceful world,” and I have to totally wrap my brain around the verbiage before I introduce myself to the classroom of teachers in two hours.

One of the books is called Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubach PhD, written in 1930 by a missionary to Muslims: For the first time in my life I know what I must do off in lonesome Lanao. I know why God left this aching void, for Himself to fill. Off on this mountain I must do three things:
1. I must pursue this voyage of discovery in quest of God's will. I must because the world needs me to do it.
2. I must plunge into mighty experiments in intercessory prayer, to test my hypothesis that God needs my help to do His will for others, and that my prayer releases His power. I must be His channel, for the world needs me.
3. I must confront these Moros with a divine love which will speak Christ to them though I never use His name. They must see God in me, and I must see God in them. Not to change the name of their religion, but to take their hand and say, "Come, let us look for God."

And this personal admonition touched that open spot in my heart as well.

I am also rereading Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Baily. Today I read a section on the Lord’s Prayer which explains that the Greek word “epiousios, as in describing, ‘Give us this day our epiosious bread’, only occurs once in the entire history of the Greek language. Origen, a famous Greek scholar of the early third century, wrote that he did not find this word in use among the Greeks, nor was it used by private individuals. He concluded that it must have been created by the Evangelists.”

Dr. Baily goes on to dice and splice four or more possible meanings of this word, and lands with the Ancient Syriac translation, the oldest known translation of the Greek New Testament, that we are to ask our abba Father (in Aramaic, which by the way, I am going to mass in Aramaic this evening) to “give us today the bread that doesn’t run out.” This means that we are to have no fear for tomorrow, He will provide. In fact, He has already provided.

Every morning I take a brisk half an hour walk past the eucalyptus-framed neighborhood gardens over to the exercise park. It is not terribly fancy, but every morning I join a crew of fellow “older” souls who are likewise walking briskly around in circles, and every now and then one of us ventures into the jungle of heavy metal machines to try and wrestle a little muscle into our softish bodies. And actually, it is a great time of reflection as I consider the morning word.

And today I wondered what intercession for the Kurdish peoples might look like, as I hold Alan Wale’s kneeling mother and his sparkly sister and his dedicated brother in my freshly opened-up heart. And Wale himself.

And I am grateful for the reminder that He gives bread that doesn’t give out as I consider the past year that unrolled from this very spot and who could have ever imagined, and truthfully, once again I cannot even possibly imagine what the next year holds, but He will provide enough with His open-handed gifts.

Our daily bread