A Baby’s Birth: Signpost for a New Beginning

Her head is not any larger than my fist and covered in thick, dark hair. Her dark eyes occasionally blink open in clear, olive-brown skin with no signs of the customary charcoal markings that supposedly ward off evil spirits here. Even fully clothed, she weighs less than any baby doll in our house. While Christian friends talked with her mother, she peacefully dozed for over half an hour.

Hundreds of years ago, Arab traders brought Islam to the coast of East Africa. Each year, while they waited for the trade winds to blow them back to the Arabian Peninsula, they took wives, had children and developed a new language and people group known today as the Swahili-Speaking Arabs. This group of 500,000 people is found today along the coasts of Kenya, Tanzania, throughout the Arabian Peninsula, and in most metropolitan hubs around the world. With strong cultural, family, business ties back to the Arabian Peninsula, and travel in their blood, they have the ability to move and impact people that they come in contact with.

I am going to do something new. It is already happening. Don’t you recognize it? I will clear a way in the desert. I will make rivers on dry land. (Isaiah 43:19, God’s Word trans.)

As the friends prepared to leave, they lifted a blessing over this beautiful baby girl, and the Father showed them how special this new life is. This baby’s birth marks the beginning of something new: she is the first child born to an openly professing parent, the first child who – from birth – will realize that each person has a choice to make about following Jesus.

“When sins are forgiven, there is no longer any need to sacrifice for sins. Brothers and sisters, because of the blood of Jesus we can now confidently go into the holy place. Jesus has opened a new and living way for us to go through the curtain. (The curtain is his own body.) We have a superior priest in charge of God’s house. We have been sprinkled with His blood to free us from a guilty conscience, and our bodies have been washed with clean water. So we must continue to come to Him with a sincere heart and strong faith” (Hebrews 10: 18-22, God’s Word trans.).

• Please pray that she, along with her brothers and sisters, and father will see how their mother is different because she follows Jesus, Isa al Mesih.
• Please ask that God will clearly call each of them to join her as part of His kingdom
• Just as in the days of Pentecost, ask for the children to prophesy, the young to have visions and the old to have dreams of God that lead to multitudes of chosen ones calling on the name of Jesus for rescue.
• Dozens of Swahili-Speaking Arabs Followers are scattered, many living out their faith in secret. The enemy has worked hard at keeping them apart and isolated. And yet our God is stronger still! Pray for unity among followers for community growth.