[W]e are having Carl Meaderis come and speak at Central on April 21-22 so I wanted to familiarize myself a bit with him. To do that, I read through the book Tea With Hezbollah written by Ted Dekker along with Carl. Carl is a Christian committed to serving Muslims. In the book they tell the story of visiting some of the world’s most influential Muslim leaders and getting to know them a bit. They frame the book in the context of Jesus’ teaching about the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). This is an interesting story to focus on given the specific encounters they write about. There are many transcripts in the book of the actual questions and answers. They usually asked each leader what makes them laugh, and then asked them to tell a joke. This was in additional to a handful of other questions. But there was one question in particular that stood out to me:

“When was the last time you cried”?

To begin with, I think it’s a brilliant question. What better way to show the humanity of people that many Americans quickly deem as terrorists without further thought. Second, the answers they got to this question have stuck with me. Namely, that most of the people had a specific answer to this question and it was usually something within the last week. Now I realize that there are plenty of cultural differences but this startled me. It startled me because I am a self professed non-crier. The last time I cried was when my daughter was born a few months ago and all sorts of visions raced through my mind. One of the bigger reasons is that I live a pretty cushy life. There aren’t many things that happen to me on a regular basis (as in weekly) that push me to tears. I’m not sure what conclusion I should draw from these thoughts. Two of them stand out to me: 1) I need to cry more; or 2) I need to continually realize how blessed I am. I don’t really know how to just make the first one happen, and I’m confident the second one should be included. When’s the last time you cried? FYI… our Easter services at Central this weekend might help us all out in this area. 😉

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