This post was written and posted on Thursday, 22 January, but reflects an experience of Scott's which occurred earlier in the week.
In the market from Damascus Gate to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we went into a booth in search of a gift for Mary’s prayer partner. We came to a shop with a very solicitous salesman who offered to sell us what we wanted and much more. At one point, he asked us if we had been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and we said that we had.
He replied, “I love the Church. I go there often. It is a holy place. I go in the daytime when the light is better. You can see more. When you go there, don’t just look at the big things, the bright things. Look away from the crowds, at the details. They are beautiful.
“I am a Muslim. My friends ask me why I go to the church, because I am Muslim. Christians, Muslims, Jews, we all worship the same God. How we choose to worship that same God shouldn’t matter. People who fight over how we worship are stupid, or they don’t understand that we worship the same God.”
I pondered this for some moments, then found myself saying to him, “I wish that more of us felt that way.”
Here I was in Jerusalem, in a market stall a stone’s throw from where Jesus carried his cross, speaking with a total stranger, a Muslim, a Palestinian, praying out loud the hope that more of us could share this man’s belief in the one God.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are welcomed!