<html>
<head>
<style><!--
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family:Tahoma
}
--></style>
</head>
<body class='hmmessage'>
Good morning, Visionaires --<br><br>I recently finished "Byzantium," a historical novel about a 10-century Irish monk's pilgrimage to Constantinople/Byzantium, and would recommend it highly; when my then-16-year-old eldest son read it, he said it changed his life. It had a pretty profound effect on me as well.<br><br>But toward the end of the book, something in it struck me, and I wanted to toss it out as an example of something other than the vicious, bigoted, ill-informed, shameful things said of Muslims by some Christians -- even some in my own extended family. This is how author Stephen Lawhead described Islam, which, in the terminology of the day, employed terms like "Muhammedans" that we no longer use. Nonetheless, it's an interesting departure from the ignorance and hate we see around us:<br><br>". . . This, then, began my first acquaintance with the Muhammedans, who, I promptly learned, were not pagans, as I had first supposed, but a people who worshiped the same God as Christians and Jews, and, like them, revered the Holy Word. The knew somewhat of Jesu, but, like the Jews, did not hold him to be the Christ. Nevertheless, they were extremely devout, and very exacting in their ways and lived according to a set of laws laid down in a book, the Qur'an, written by one called Muhammed, a mighty prophet indeed. The chief tenet of their belief was, as I came to understand it, complete and utter submission to the will of God, a state they called <i>islam.</i>" <br><br>(Stephen R. Lawhead, Byzantium, Harper/Prism, 1996)<br><br>Now, I am obviously not a Muslim. And all Muslims are obviously not as devoted to Allah with the piety described by Lawhead -- just as many, many Christians, and at times myself, do not live in the piety, humility, devotion, and submission to God that ideally describes Christianity. However, there is nothing in my faith that requires, much less endorses, hate and fear as a tool for noting the differences in our approaches to God. <br><br>I pray that I will achieve a state of <i>islam</i> in my worship of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and I pray for peace to rule the hearts of all Christians and Muslims and Jews bent on violence and prejudice -- which is not a tenet of any faith. <br><br><font style="" color="#8064a2"><font style="font-size: 12pt;" size="3"><font style="" face="Verdana">Keely<br>www.keely-prevailingwinds.com<br></font></font></font><br><br> </body>
</html>