Who is the Messiah?

Another day, another adventure!

Two days ago I brought the family a cassette of Somali worship music to listen to, some of which I had already played for them.  The dad and daughter were listening to it yesterday afternoon while I was in my room reading my Bible and praying, when all of the sudden the dad jumped up and shut it off, kind of yelling in Somali.  I thought...oh boy!  I think they found the song about Jesus!

Sure enough, the daughter came storming into the room with the cassette player saying "Listen to this!  What is this?"  The song was saying "Last night I saw the Messiah, I must give praise..." telling a story about one believer's encounter with Jesus.   Apparently they thought they also heard a song saying the Messiah is God, but I don't think any of the songs say that, so that's interesting.

Anyway, I said that the singers had read the holy books that Muslims are supposed to read (The Law, Psalms and New Testament), and were singing about what they read.  I showed her in Matthew when angels visited Joseph and Mary, told them about Jesus and said that he would be the Savior of the world and be called Emmanuel-God with us.  I told her the New Testament says that Jesus was the Messiah the world was waiting for, but she was like "What's the Messiah?"  So, she doesn't even have the basic understanding that we need someone to rescue us.  This is interesting since most Muslims I've talked to have read in the Qoran that Jesus is the Messiah who was sent with the good news, but they don't know what the good news is.

I went all the way back to Genesis and told her the story of Adam and Eve and read God's promise that one day Eve's child would crush the serpent's head, although the serpent would bite his heel.  So even though we all inherited evil from Adam and Eve, we have the promise that a man will come and defeat evil and bring us back to God. 

That was as far as her attention span would last, and I had to go to work at SALT, so I left it there and I hope for a chance to follow up with the next story, Abraham and his son (who will remain nameless so we don't get confused whether it was Isaac or Ishmael!).

One thing I've been pondering lately, partly because the man I'm interning with, Mike Neterer mentioned it in passing, is the importance of literacy in evangelism.  The question is, can you effectively disciple someone who is illiterate and have confidence in their ability to share the truth with others without scripture?  The whole idea of the Bible has been puzzling me too actually.  Why did God decide to select certain books and letters, excluding some, and use these to communicate his character, commands, etc. ?  There are cultures that have no written language, and the oral historians have proven to be amazingly accurate, but God chose to write it down.  Even written word isn't immune to mistakes and deliberate changes, barring God's intervention that is.  But without that written record as a standard, who knows where our theology and practice would be today.  

So back to the question-how do you disciple someone who can't read the Bible?  I'm not sure I would be confident in setting someone loose in their culture without scripture for them to read and measure their words, actions and thoughts against.  Even as I'm sharing stories with my roommate, I can tell a shift happens when I open my Bible instead of just saying the verse or story from memory.  It's like she thinks, oh this is above me, or maybe she even questions if I'm really reading what's written.  So should I memorize the Bible and hope she remembers it accurately or should I teach her to read Somali and give her a Somali Bible?  That's all in theory obviously, she's no where near ready for that step!  

Whew.  

Oh, and I'm having a battle with the mice in the house.  I thought I had plugged up all the holes with steel wool, but apparently there are whole sections of molding that are half an inch to an inch separated from the wall!  Last night I slept a little in between my roommate sort of crying or groaning in her sleep and a mouse devouring the molding to make a nest behind my suitcase.  It was a noisy night.  Any suggestions about the molding?  Oh and apparently the mouse traps I bought are worthless because it licked the peanut butter clean off the trap and it never snapped! Grrrr!  You're going down mouse.  At least till I leave in a few weeks, at which point you'll probably have free reign again! hahaha