Al-Ghaffar, The One who Keeps on Forgiving

This word comes from the arabic root letterغ ف ر, ">which carries the meaning of covering something, concealing it, pardoning, forgiving, setting aright.  There are three related terms, al-Ghaffar, al-Ghaffur, and al-Ghaffir.  Of these three, al-Ghaffar implies the quantity and repetition of forgiveness.  Al-Ghaffur focuses on the magnitude  of what is forgiven.  I don't know about al-Ghaffir.  It just gets translated the forgiver.

In making the picture, I used the picture of a wave because waves keep coming.  I used red text, because red speaks of blood.  and for Christians, it is understood that Jesus died on the cross so that we might be forgiven.

In the gospels, there is a story that Peter came to Jesus, who was teaching the people to forgive each other, and asked "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" and Jesus answered "I do not say to you seven times but seventy-seven times (or seventy times seven)" (Matthew 18: 21-22).  God enjoins us to be freely and repeatedly forgiving.

One might wonder, if God keeps on forgiving us, do we make any progress at all?  It is true that sometimes we seem to make no progress, but I think if we keep seeking to improve, we find that God does give us victory but also shows us subtler sins.  At any rate, this song represents an aspect of my experience as I struggle to walk with God in integrity and faithfulness.

Over and Over

Over and over and over again

I find myself missing the mark.

Over and over and over again

I stumble and fall in the dark.

Sometimes I've tried and failed

And sometimes I've failed to try

Over and over and over again

I cry out for forgiveness from God on high.

Over and over and over again

You forgive me and help me to make a new start.

Over and over and over again

You clean up the mess in my heart.

And I stand here in wonder and awe that You

Would keep on forgiving a person who

In all of my blunders keeps coming to You

Over and over again.

Beginning Again

I started this blog back in 2011.  I had been teaching an introductory course in Great World Religions at Temple University as part of my Ph.D. studies at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.  I was working at giving students, many of whom started with a tendency to see Islam in a very negative light, some insight into the positive side of that religion.  I do not believe that all religions are equal.  I disagree with Islam in some very important ways.  But I do believe that the better we understand all of the people in the world, including their faith, the more equipped we are to love those people and to share with them the things that we believe are important.  As I was looking for ways to teach my students about positive aspects of Islam,  I found the 99 beautiful names of Allah, particularly in this Nasheed:

I have personally been captivated by the many ways that God describes God's self in the Bible.  I have many biblical self-descriptions of God painted on the walls of my house, and I love the verse that says "The name of the LORD is a strong tower.  The righteous run into it and is safe." (Proverbs 18:10 ESV).  In my understanding, to run into the name of the LORD is to run into the nature of God.  I thought that the above Nasheed was beautiful and it seemed to me that it would be an interesting and valuable devotional exercise for myself to spend time with each of these names of Allah, pondering them and understanding them better and seeing whether I could see them reflected in the Bible.  My goal was to understand how the words were understood by Arabic speakers, and by their usage in the Quran, and then to look at them from a Christian perspective.

As I began writing my Ph.D. dissertation, I felt that I had to cut back on activities that did not directly feed into that arduous process.  After a bunch of years, two different approved topics and a lot of fruitless effort, I decided to abandon my attempt to get a Ph.D. in historical theology, and proceed with my life as an A.B.D. (All but dissertation).  I had by this time completely forgotten about this blog.

Recently, I reconnected with a childhood friend, and she asked me whether I had any resources that would help her learn more about world religions.  Ha!  An assignment I would really enjoy!  As I began looking through what I had gathered over the years, I found not only the 99 names nasheed, but rediscovered this blog.  All of the links to pictures and songs were broken, but as I looked through the writing I had done back in 2011, I found that I still liked the work I had done.  Although I have recently taken on some new responsibilities, it seemed like the time has come to take this up again.

My new responsibilities are that I have been ordained and installed as a copastor at a small "dinner church".  

Who is my audience, and what is my purpose for doing this?  First and foremost, I am doing this for myself and for God.  That does not mean that I am not going to share it with people (I'm a pretty open person--if you know me, I am likely to share whatever is uppermost in my heart and mind at the time).  I would love it if the work I am doing here would come in time to bless other people.  But the first thing I am doing is coming before God to love and worship Him.

If it ministers to other Christians, I will rejoice.  If it allows me to share my faith with Muslims and other non-Christians, I will rejoice in that as well.  If these songs and thoughts and poems are valuable at some point for Arabic-speaking Christians that would also be great.  But my primary purpose in doing this is to worship God, and to grow in my own faith and love.

Over the past 3-4 weeks, as I have rewritten and re-recorded the songs that were on the blog, and fixed the broken links, I find that this work has given me a renewed appreciation for the awesomeness of God.  And so my plan at this point is to pick up the work where I left off, and to attempt to deal with one new name each week or so.