from Turkey (names and places replaced with initials to protect my friends):
H was so full of joy when he called me, “M, I’m a dad!” We went to visit him in the hospital. Sure enough, he was a new father and his daughter, only about 9 hours old, was so beautiful and perfectly healthy. They named her Y. His wife, L, was recovering from the ordeal just nicely as well. This was a difficult place for her to give birth because it was where they had lost family members and where even she had spent much time. Her mother told me with tears and a sigh of relief that L had had several operations in this hospital to reduce the pressure of water on her brain. Because of her condition, L was always slow to speak, slow to react to others. But now this hospital not only carried the air of death and difficulty, but new life for their entire family.
H & L had come here to x (a city in Turkey) where his wife’s family lives because he was experiencing heavy pressure from his own father and brothers to turn back to Islam. “I’m ready to make a new start here and serve the Lord Jesus Christ in any way I can,” he explained to me when we met a month ago.
This morning, there was a knock at our office door. “Gel,” I said. “Come!” H came in. I smiled, “H how are you?” I kissed him and my partner also rose to greet him. Uncharacteristically ignoring my partner, he said simply, “Not good. We’ve split up.”
L’s father has been putting pressure on her. “Either you divorce that man or else you have no family. You can choose—him or us.” H has been trying to reason with them. They keep putting it back on him. “Why do you love Jesus so much that you would do this to your family? Either reject Jesus or else you will have to divorce our daughter,” they say.
“I’m not doing this. I’m not going anywhere—but I can’t reject Jesus! How can you just change what you believe in? You are the one’s putting pressure on your daughter not one week after she has given birth and when she is still weak and recovering,” he told them.
L, feeling the pressure said to H, “Give up Jesus for me.”
“L, I cannot do that. I am not rejecting you. I am not leaving, but I cannot reject Jesus. Have I ever once asked you to change what you believe?” He said.
“Never,” she answered.
“Then why would you do this to me?” He asked.
“Then give up Jesus for our daughter,” she pushed.
“I cannot,” he said.
“Then we are through.”
He later told me, “What makes this so hard…I never thought she would say that. I’ve lost my job, all my money, my property in P city and come here. That was easy. This is really difficult…”
H is planning to wait it out. For him, there is no recourse.
When someone is beaten to death without cause by a hostile government it may end up in the newspapers. The Christians in Turkey are suffering injustice like H is and it is not even news enough to be in the papers, much less to ask for help from government officials. These believers experience injustice in so many different ways every single day and there is nothing they can do—except to cry out to their Father for justice.
We have much to pray for…
kingdom travelin' 