The gospel in Darfur

Besides Baghdad, if there is one place on this earth that could be described as hell on earth, it would be the region of Darfur in the country of Sudan. Unless you have been living in a cave and have never heard of the actor George Clooney, you probably have heard about the senseless slaughtering and displacement of the Darfur people carried out by the Janjaweed, an Arab militia group tied to the Sudanese government.

Into this atmposphere of chaos, a few brave missionaries have gone to deliver much-needed humanitarian relief along with the true bread of life-the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I just received a report last week about how missionaries from a certain agency are risking their lives every day to deliver much needed humanitarian relief to the people of Darfur. According to the report, several Muslim sheiks have approached them to ask them about how to find peace in their lives. When the missionaries told them about how Jesus could release the burden of guilt over their lives because of what He did on the cross, they did not respond with "How dare you come into our country and try to convert us!" or "You are just an arm of the CIA (an often propogated Muslim myth)". Instead, the response was "How do we get the word out to our villages?"

I've been hearing reports like this from all throughout the Muslim world. People and cultures are not artifacts to be kept in a museum. Behind a lot of what we see happening in the world are real human beings longing for peace. Too often in our over-stereotypical western media culture, we forget that.