What if…
It was the coldest Coca-Cola I’d ever tasted and a shock to the system in a room warmed from the heat of bodies. Truth be told, much of the evening was a shock to the system.
I had spent the last several hours photographing a traditional wedding in a rural Berber village. The wedding was so traditional that the groom hadn’t even made an appearance yet as the men and women celebrated separately.
Like most North African weddings, this one would go into the early morning hours. It was already around two a.m. and I was grateful to put my camera down and have a moment to sit.
From the oldest grandmother to the toddlers waddling around the seated women, it seemed that every female in the tiny village was present. Some of the women wore the elaborate wedding attire specific to that region and I had even been given a traditional long dress to wear. We all sat on the floor in clusters around small tables as food was brought in.
While I had learned the dialect of Arabic spoken in this part of the world, in this village they spoke a rural Berber dialect that I was completely unfamiliar with.
Unable to participate in the conversations around me, I found myself silently praying. My heart was heavy from an evening full of wedding rituals that were rooted in fear and superstition. Yes, it was a celebration of marriage and these were happy women. But they were also fearful. Fearful of the evil eye, fearful of harm befalling the bride, fearful of some evil coming because they hadn’t done what they needed to do to protect this new bride and groom and their families. Who could blame them? Fear is entrenched in every culture, whether we see it for what it is or not. The only way out of fear that I have ever known is through the love of Jesus.
I wondered, Has any Christ follower been to this village before? And then wondered, Who will come? How will these people hear about Jesus?
We hear about the unreached, but when we are actually sitting among them the weight of lostness feels heavier.
For me, they are no longer a nameless, faceless people group. They are not just a statistic as one of the unengaged, and unreached people groups on Joshua Project. They are these women. Mothers, sisters, daughters, little girls playing peek-a-boo, grandmas leading call and response songs as they beat drums. Women I once sat around a tiny table with, drinking ice-cold Coca-Cola in little tea glasses.
In Matthew 9:36 we read that Jesus saw the masses and He had compassion on them.
He saw them.
And he was moved with compassion.
I want my own heart to see these masses, this unreached people group scattered across tiny villages in North Africa, and that my response would mirror that of Jesus’.
A heart of compassion for the lost.
When we think about an unreached people group - a people group where there is no gospel witness, what is our heart response?
Jesus doesn’t invite us to only pray for the lost, or to only give generously, he invites us to sit among them. We don’t have to go to the unreached, but we get the privilege of living among them. They remain no longer a nameless, faceless statistic, but a face tenderly created by a loving Father who longs for them to be reconciled to Himself.
I lived hours away from that village, spoke a different language, and was just a stranger in their midst for a few hours. What if a Christ Follower were to go and live among them? Or what if, one of their youths were to attend university in one of the nearby cities, and would hear the Gospel and take it back to their village?
I think back on that rural village wedding, and I imagine what a future one could look like, a celebration free from fear, with the grandmothers playing their drums and singing with pure joy, a small taste of the great feast and celebration that awaits us.
*The term “Berber” is what the Joshua Project labels as a People cluster and it includes 11 different people groups spanning six North African countries. For the sake of security, the specific Berber people group in this story was not named.