MEADOR: Redemption is in the mundane

If we had met in another time or place, we probably would’ve tried to kill each other instead of sharing a meal.
That’s how it’s gone through history when white people meet black people. Or when Christians meet Muslims.
Yet on a spring night outside of a Starbucks, hunger killed the things that divide us and a Muslim Darfuri man named Shla and I got dinner at a Subway.
As we stood outside Subway, he told me his story. He said his name was Shla, and he came from Darfur. He told me about the wars that broke his home.
His eyes caught fire as he spoke; his words became clearer, sharper. The man whose eyes had seemed so lifeless moments before when we met on the street, the man who told me through a thick Sudanese accent and liquor-tainted breath that he’d been kicked out of the mission and hadn’t eaten in days now stood before me, fully alive.
He asked me not to forget him. Then he grabbed my hand and with his eyes closed he spoke a blessing of some kind in Arabic.
And I swear, God was in those words.
I’ve heard lots of prayers in my life. I’ve prayed my fair share, too. But I can count the ones that were so honest, vulnerable, and real on one hand.
Shla wasn’t the only hungry one that night.
In the past month, I’d faced what felt like the harshest criticism I’ve ever experienced, and I spent the last three years of high school regularly being corrected by people I’d once thought were friends. But even the worst days of high school hadn’t seen such criticisms.
On top of that, there were relational disappointments and personal challenges that struck at my core fears, things that threatened to undo my humanity. Loneliness, isolation, the fear of not being good enough.
Times like that have a way of detaching you from yourself. You’ll pass through days passively, without fully engaging in anything, almost as if you’re an observer of your own life.
When I met Shla I was every bit as hungry as he was, but I needed more than a roast beef sandwich on Italian bread at Subway.
And the truth is, so did Shla.
So many of us pass through our lives shuffling from one heartache to another, facing disappointment after disappointment. Of course, few among us have suffered in ways remotely comparable to Shla. He grew up in a time when the Muslims of the north and Christians of the south were at war. He didn’t think the northern Muslims under their genocidal war criminal of a president, Omar al-Bashir, would ever attack their fellow Muslims in Darfur.
But they did.
And while none of us probably have stories as tragically heart-wrenching as Shla’s, we all have stories that involve betrayal and losing the things we hold closest. And we all need a larger narrative to help us make sense of our own individual stories.
This is what makes the Christian story so inescapably compelling to me.
First, it’s shamelessly realistic. It doesn’t promise us a comfy life of opulence detached from the pain of a post-Eden world.
After all, Christians worship a homeless dude who got murdered.
Say what you will about the Bible, it’s an honest book. Probably because about half of its authors were murdered.
But second, it’s what I learn in moments like the one I shared with Shla on Wednesday night standing on the corner of 14th and O streets eating Subway.
The Christian God’s redemptive creativity knows no ends.
It probably shouldn’t be surprising. If the story hadn’t been told so poorly and flippantly by so many who haven’t grasped its power, the story of the Crucifixion would shock us. How could such a brutal death possibly bring life? That moment is perhaps the zenith of redemptive creativity.
It’s the creativity that sees every ounce of evil and brokenness in the world and understands it was reversed by an act of sacrifice and love at the cross. And while that may be the greatest example of humility and sacrifice crippling and crushing evil, the ordinary moments of life do it too, albeit to a far lesser degree.
God’s grace given to us, in both the momentous events and the mundane, undoes the debilitating effects of evil in the world. Ordinary moments that God gives to us, whether we acknowledge him as their source or not, can subvert the evil that exists within us and the evil done to us. That’s redemption - the setting right of all the evil our broken hearts suffer from.
I’m learning there’s redemption for me in driving down an open road, windows down, sunroof open with the White Stripes’ “Elephant” cranked - granted, this can be an expensive redemption because it will inevitably lead to me needing to buy new speakers.
I’m learning there’s redemption in spending a bit of time in the kitchen making food to share with friends.
I’m learning there’s redemption in a good drink.
And lately, I’m learning there’s redemption in the achingly-real Arabic prayers of a homeless Muslim man named Shla.
Jake Meador is a junior history and english major.  Reach him at Jakemeador@dailynebraskan.com.

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2 comments

WASP

Mon Mar 9 2009 09:50

Well, the thing that torques me is not the monotony of reading every time about how bad whites or Christians are, but the attempt at high drama. I know people who are always bragging about some incredible emotional experience which somehow imparts a superior wisdom - it let's them sweep all inconvenient truths away, sort of like when a drunk gets weepy and starts preaching about "the only thing that really matters." It's a license. Once you've been to the mountain top, you can do no wrong, and you get to tell everyone what's what. It's a form of self-delusional arrogance.

Logic reason

Mon Mar 9 2009 02:36

Jake jake jake...you always seem to nudge in the Christian and White bashing in every article. It wasn't "white vs. black" when talking about slavery which you are apparently obsessed about. Try this--it was Government vs. People, or even better, the State vs. Freedom. You see, slavery was mandated by government and in fact flourished under the proliferation of Islamic rule. Not only that, but Africans enslave many of their own kind. Yep, black people enslave black people. Ironic ain't it?

In the end, slavery was never white vs. black. It was the government vs. the people and liberty. Without government, slavery would never have existed. In fact, without government, the genocide in Darfur, the Holocaust, and every war in history would not have been able to have occurred without the State. Quit thinking white people are inherently racist, or that Christians are bad. It's the authority that rests in the State that force the ambitions on people much like yourself onto the rest of us. It's quite scary.

Oh, and by the way if you're going to pull the race card as a White-guy, I also want reparations for my ancestors being slaughtered for being of the wrong culture, as well as the fact that mine were burned at the stake for being considered a witch. As soon as you start seeing how ridiculous your views are concerning what happened hundreds of years ago, the better society will be.

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