Sel and Mecca

Written by a Cafe 1040 student  

"I will see you in eternity!" Sel says to my team as we leave his house. There is a pit welling in my stomach as I write, knowing that Sel and I will never see each other again unless missionaries faithfully pursue him and his village (where currently there are no missionaries and it is 0% reached and evangelized).

We just had a Ramadan dinner with him where he explained in detail his Muslim faith. His paradise is with Allah, and when he says he will see us again it is so far from the truth. I feel for the first time a deep tension between us, the unreached, and me. Suddenly, Sel is not just a person but he is a representation of many living without Jesus. Sel is a person who exudes friendliness and hospitality and spending time with him should have been easy going and fun, but when we were able to share what we believed with him and ask him questions, it was as if scales had truly covered his ears and he was deaf to anything we were saying. 

"There is a scale, and when you do bad things then the scale leans far down on one side," Sel says as he motions with his hand an unbalance. "So you must do good things to even the scale, you see?"

 "We believe the scale is always at the bottom for us because we are constantly doing wrong, so that's why we believe we need Jesus who makes the scale even for us," My team member explains, to which Sel interrupts, "Yes, yes, you must do good things."

The conversation continues in this manner where it seems like anything we say is not heard. My heart is breaking knowing that his fate is to join his family in a graveyard, where all bodies and tombstones face Mecca.

Writing this is hard because I cannot convey the weight of it all. I cannot explain the way it feels to walk away from a person who is without access to a book written in his own language, a person who has no one pursuing him, a person who will only ever know a false God unless something changes. I cannot convey the weight of the enemy's hold on this village or the weight of the scales that covered Sel's ears and the words he said in confidence about a god who is not truth and life.