Ensign: Another Prayer For Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 15 March 2013
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. James 1:27
Tuesday morning I saw it. It was a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran, giving the mother of Hugo Chavez, the just-deceased president of Venezuela, a hug. She was in mourning; when you're grieving, someone giving you a hug is a pretty natural thing, isn't it?
NOT to the group of clerics who actually run Iran (yes they do), and a representative of their Society of Militant Clergy – strange to use that name, isn't it? – criticized Ahmadinejad for doing so, citing that Islamic teaching, or at least their interpretation of it, prohibits contacts between members of the opposite sex if they're not family.
I will not use today's pulpit – for honestly, I do view Ensign, no matter how many or how few readers it has, as a pulpit – to debate Islam versus Christianity. That's not my point, and there are so many persons and resources who can do a way better job dealing with those issues than I can!
Does any religion whose leaders have the gall to criticize its members for showing compassion really live up to its purported purpose? Even we who know Jesus as Lord and Savior – sorry, Christian has become a term I use sparingly – who are called to “go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them … ” (Matthew 28:19) are not told, are nowhere told, to hate those who don't accept!
There are many who've spoken for Jesus (myself included) who have given people that impression – that we hate you because you're not like us, we hate you because we don't pray to the same God – and for that, please, may we ask for your forgiveness? May I ask for your forgiveness?
A few years ago I wrote an Ensign titled “A Prayer for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” and as I've gone back and read that, considering whether or not to post from that in here. And only the last paragraph made the cut in my eyes – that I pray God was then looking through:
Please read with me Luke 18:8. “I tell you that [God] will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Two thousand years ago when the members of His audience lived under, benefited from, or enforced Roman occupation. Now whatever our circumstance and world is like. It’s not will God be faithful to keep His promises (He will) but will we persist in seeking His will? For our leaders and ourselves, in our nations and our families. That’s when our prayer to God, our communication with God, comes closest to who we really are. Amen.
Despite my own misgivings about the nation Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominally leads – see paragraph two above, it's not my desire to see Iran, or for that matter any nation that isn't Israel or any people that isn't Jewish, smashed flat. (This gets into my political views, so that's all I'll say about that.) I'm not, and I would think anyone who has seriously taken Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord is not, thirsting for rivers of blood.
Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh! Matthew 18:7
Are they going to come? Yes. The offenses against each other (where shall I start?), the rivers of blood (from Exodus 7:20-25, the first plague against Egypt, to Revelation 16:4, the third vial of God's wrath poured out upon Earth), and all the worst that you and I can imagine and have been conditioned to accept as the price of living, is going to happen and is happening. But take a minute to stop the world. Show compassion, not doctrine. I'd say if the enemies of our faith are capable of that, how much more should we be?
I pray we are – and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is – capable of and showing much more!
The ides of March are come.
Aye, Caesar, but not gone.
David
P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encourager to action too! If you find that I’m not or you want me to get lost, just let me know – thank you!
Thank You, Lord, that we can come to you in prayer and that You provide for all our needs, even when we don’t know what they are. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence there and around the world.
Thank You, Lord, for everyone in leadership and service, both here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have and the promise of new life through You. I pray that we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.
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