Athens, Wildfires & Praying from the Heart

We live in a culture in which a lot of really good and decent people remain silent about their deepest held beliefs — while overly outspoken (often narcissistic) men and women make a living off of filling the world with inflammatory and offensive content, instilling fear and division wherever they go.

Perhaps those people who make a living off of riling people up have turned us off to the really important truth that we have a duty to share the Gospel with the world around us. Perhaps we’ve accepted the fact that we can’t do much to stem the tide and to share the good news with a world that is desperate for it.

Honestly, I’ve fallen into that trap of remaining silent for fear of offending or because I don’t think it will do any good — but now more than ever it feels like it’s time people of the good news share that good news with everyone they meet.

More than ever, the need to evangelize ought to be a priority if we call ourselves Christians. I mean, it was one of Jesus’ primary commands to us,

“Go out into the whole world and share the gospel.”

Mark 16:15

Besides, Christians ought not to fear offending somebody more than they ought to fear not loving somebody enough to share the truth with them — the truth that will set them free!

Why do we not see that?

We’ve been commanded by God to go to all the nations and share the Gospel, and one day, our judgement will involve how well we did that — how well we shared the Gospel and lived the Gospel — but more than that, there are souls hanging in the balance and it’s just plain selfish to care more about our comfort than we do about their souls.

Obviously, being offensive for the sake of being offensive is wrong — but holding back the truth and not speaking from the heart is also wrong — especially if it might lead somebody closer to Christ and the freedom in His Church.

We are now in a society that cherishes “niceness” as the greatest virtue, but the problem with being “nice” is it can get in the way of doing the right thing, standing up for the right things and sharing the full message of the Gospel with a world being led into darkness.

Perhaps it’s time for a little less “nice” and a little more love that says the difficult things, love that is willing to suffer, love that goes out of its way to seek out the good of the person in front of us.

Which brings me to our recent trip to Athens. We had a number of drivers taking us back and forth from airports and to various sites and landmarks we had planned to visit during our trip.

One of the things I love about traveling as a family is it seems to set people at ease and open them up to conversations — we get to meet and know the locals more easily because everybody seems to be able to relate to being part of a family, and maybe especially because our family is not the perfectly behaved, all in a row kind of family.

All those flaws –and there are many — probably set people at ease too. Just goes to show you, God can use anything to reach out to people.

This is especially true for our drivers on all of our family trips. Perhaps it’s the physical closeness of us having to sit up front with our drivers, or maybe it’s the fact that John has never met a stranger in his life, whatever it is we always end up feeling like friends by the end of our trips.

We pray with our drivers, discuss faith and family life and the challenges of our times, and especially this year, what it means to be “free” in a world that seems to have gone a bit mad.

We’ve all been through a lot this year and the privilege of getting to sit side by side with another human being in a far off place wasn’t lost on us.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

But, first, did I mention that Athens was incredibly hot while we there — like record breaking hot? We were exploring ancient ruins in 108 degree weather on the two days we spent in Athens, and little did we know that this long summer had left the wooded lands and vineyards just north of Athens dry like tinder.

We noticed the winds picking up on our last evening in Athens. We noticed the faint smell of smoke and a little haze over the sunset…our driver told us fires had begun just north of there.

We assumed all would be well and went to sleep with a beautiful, full experience of Athens.

The next morning we woke up to the smell of what I can only compare to a campfire — only it was all over the city. There was a yellow haze of smoke and chemicals from burning suburbs north of us. People were being told to wear stay inside and masks to stem the effects of the dangerous air quality.

As we drove through the city, ashes were falling on our windshield and it was clear that this was a very serious situation for the people of Athens.

It was actually pretty eery as we drove out and our driver told us that he was a volunteer firefighter and had been battling the fires that were spreading across the suburbs of Athens. He was such a nice man and so good — you could just tell that about him — very sincere, very concerned about the people of Athens.

I was sitting there in the middle of the front seat and I noticed this nice young man had a rosary on his the conditioning vent.

I was honestly so impressed that he didn’t mind displaying an important symbol of his faith for anybody to see — he didn’t feel the need to hide his faith, apologize for it — and it just inspired me to be bolder about faith, too.

So, I turned to the kids and back and said, “kids, let’s pray for Athanasis (our driver) and the people of Athens”. So, John began the prayer and I must say it was a very, very Catholic prayer. We were calling on all the Saints and Jesus and I finished up the prayer asking Mamma Mary to take care of Athanasis and asking God the Father to bless this situation.

It was one of those moments where you kind of feel the Holy Spirit moving, ya know? Three times as we approached the airport, Athanasis thanked us for praying for him and for Athens. You could tell he was touched by our prayer.

As we arrived at the airport, and stepped out the door, Athanasis thanked us one more time and then he did the hand to heart and a slight bow and it hit me, he was Muslim and I had prayed a very Catholic prayer because I thought he was Catholic.

Apparently, those beads I thought was a rosary were Muslim prayer beads and it occurred to me in that moment that my mistaken identity had pulled down barriers to praying from the heart, and strangely, brought us closer together.

Moral of the story: had I realized our driver was Muslim, I would never have pulled out the “big guns” Jesus, Mary, and the Saints — for fear of offending — but what I am now starting to understand is we have the truth and we ought to share it with everybody we meet.

No more holding back, just share the Gospel — all of it, and if people want to be offended, well so be it, but at the very least we tried and we need to keep on trying, because ultimately it’s about loving our neighbor and speaking the truth that is written on their hearts already.

So keep sharing the truth. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you boldness and set the world on fire with the love of God. Hooray!

And that is all I have to say on that. Have a beautiful day!

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