The Homeless Muslim Girl

The Homeless Muslim Girl
June 26, 2017

One of the many benefits that life has provided me is the joy of accompanying my wife to her many video conferences around the world. This has given me the chance to visit many interesting places in Europe and America and to meet scores of people and explore fascinating cities. But one of the more interesting people that I ran into first appeared to me as a ruffled blanket and stuffed garbage bag lying against the wall of a building in Cincinnati, Ohio. If it hadn’t been for the protruding shoe, I likely would have walked on by. But my momentary interests evoked a rustle from under the blanket and the face of young girl appeared with her head wrapped in a head scarf. She seemed uninterested in pursuing a conversation, so I moved on. But when I returned later, she was sitting up and I was able to talk with her.

It turned our she had been in a bad marriage, had been thrown out by an abusive husband and had lived here on this spot for many years. All she wanted out of life was a bus ticket so she could move to Washington D.C. She had heard that living on the streets there was much more satisfactory. “Could you please give me enough money to buy a bus ticket?” was her plea.

I told her I could give her something much better! I could get her off the streets entirely in a short amount of time. I pulled one of my CrossPuzzles from my knapsack. I told her that I would be willing to give her as many of these puzzles for free as she wanted and she could hand them out to any passers-by. Within a week, her picture would be in the local paper if not on the national news!

But when I tried to hand the cross to her she drew back in disgust. “That is an instrument of execution!” she hissed.

“Yes!” I said, “But is also the instrument of salvation!”

It was obvious that she was not getting the connection between the two concepts. So, I proposed an analogy to help her understand. I asked her to imagine that she was in jail, accused of some heinous crime. She was to be executed the next day. But today, her identical twin sister had come to the jail to visit her. The two of them had snuck into the ladies’ room and had switched clothing. She had emerged, wearing her sister’s business suit, and her sister had been returned to her cell in the prison garb. The next day it was her sister who died at the hands of the executioner. She was on the street, a free woman. Her crime had been paid for by her sister!

I told her that we all have an identical twin. His name is Jesus! And he has paid for our sins so that we can be free.

The light of understanding seemed to come on in her eyes. She had never heard the story framed in that manner. But the years of abuse and indoctrination were stronger than my analogies. She continued to cling to her lineage as a Muslim for her assurances. I told her that one of the best thing Jesus had ever done was to die without having children. There is no bloodline of Jesus. We can not evaluate our worthiness by examining how much of Jesus blood flows in our veins. For the descendants Islam, the attempt to trace bloodlines back to the proper son of Muhammad has been the root of generations of struggle since his death. With Jesus, he ended the bloodline. His blood does not flow in our veins. His blood covers us! We can all be his children; no restrictions from genealogy!

But in the end, all I can claim is that I had planted the seeds. Hopefully, someone else can secure the harvest. I saw her one more time, months later. It was on Google Earth as I panned the camera up that street. There she was, still lying under the purple blanket on the sidewalk. But a week later, when I again searched for her on Google, she had been painted out of the picture. Only a bottle, leaning against the wall, remained. A friend of mine, who was visiting the city, stopped across the street at the church and asked after her. They remembered her, but said when last they had heard about her, someone had given her a bus ticket to Washington D.C. Her dream had come true. But my dream for her, most likely, may never to be realized.