Wednesday, January 5, 2011

His name is Holy

I meet weekly with some Muslim friends to help them learn English. In reality I also learn a lot of Arabic, so we are all ustaadz (teacher). For some time I've been praying about how to open a dialogue with them about Jesus. Last night I prayed in earnest about it before meeting with them today. As I was preparing my notes, God answered my prayer. Now, I'm not normally sappy and I don't usually get caught up in symbolism, but this was just too significant for me to dismiss.

Arab Christians render the name of Jesus as Yesua, written as يسوع in the Arabic script. This is how it is rendered in the Bible. The Muslims use a different spelling from the Quran, which is pronounced I'sa and written as عيسى in the Arabic. I had never actually used the Quranic spelling. When I had written the last letter, I stared in amazement at what I had written. The last letter of Jesus is Aleph Maqsura. It is the first letter of the alphabet (Alpeh), written in the form of the last letter (Yeh). It is both Alpha and Omega. Maqsura means "broken". The last letter of Jesus is the broken Alpha and Omega.

This was what I had been praying for. I told my friends "I love the way the name of Jesus is written in the Quran!" We talked about Jesus being Alpha and Omega. We talked about Jesus being broken for us. We talked about Jesus in the Bible. It's right there in His name.

His name is indeed "Wonderful" and Holy. The best way to talk about Jesus is... to talk about Jesus.

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