Jamshir sipped his cup of tea as his wife Nadia nibbled on a savory pastry.
“Do you know what today is?” I asked the couple.
Jamshir nodded and smiled. “It’s Good Friday,” he said. He had seen it printed on the calendar they had hanging in the living room at home.
“But do you know what Good Friday is about?” I asked.
“That’s why we’ve come,” Jamshir replied, “so you can tell us what it is.”
My wife and I had had spiritual conversations with Jamshir and Nadia before and they knew we were devoted followers of Jesus.
“This is the day we remember when Jesus the Messiah died,” I explained. I continued that later, on Sunday, we would celebrate His resurrection from the dead.
“Can I share a portion of this story with you as it is written in the Injil, the New Testament?” I asked. They nodded their agreement, and using my phone, I pulled up a recently-completed audio version of Matthew chapters 27 and 28 in the language of their home village.
Not only was it the very first time Jamshir and Nadia had heard about Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was also the first time they had heard any portion of God’s Word in their heart language. I saw an attentiveness in their faces that I hadn’t witnessed before.
Nevertheless, I wondered how much of the story they understood. Those who had worked to translate the Bible for Jamshir and Nadia’s people had sought to employ the purest form of their language, which lent it a somewhat archaic form—similar to how King James English would sound to Americans.
But at the end of the recording, Jamshir and Nadia emphasized how familiar it sounded and how easily they could understand it.
“It sounds as if it were written by someone from our own village a long time ago, before words from other languages began mixing in,” Jamshir said. He repeated a large portion of the story to make his point about how the language resembled the stories he and Nadia had grown up hearing.
Thank God for His Good Friday gift when He interposed Jesus between us—His children—and eternal death.
Pray that the seeds of the Gospel planted in the hearts of Muslims like Jamshir and Nadia would turn into abundant fruit for God’s glory!
**This account comes from a long-term worker. Names and places have been changed for security.**
Original article: FrontiersUSA.org/blog/article/a-familiar-good-friday
