Happy Holidays
This past week people here celebrated one of their biggest holidays of the year: Sacrifice Holiday.
On Monday, the first day of the holiday, families got together and sacrificed animals. Rich families sacrificed cows or bulls, while other families sacrificed lambs and rams. After the first day, they went and visited family members and spent the week with grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc.
Whenever I ask people why they sacrifice animals, I get one of two answers:
1. To celebrate Allah providing a ram for Abraham to sacrifice instead of Ishmael.
2. To distribute the meat to the poor.
The people I talk to here don't get the concept of debt and substitute sacrifice. They don't sacrifice these animals to try to pay for their sins. When I ask them how they are going to go to heaven after all the sins they have committed, they answer "Allah is merciful, maybe he'll forgive me and let me in." It's hard sharing with these people in a way that reaches them where they're at while at the same time stressing the major points of the gospel, and I don't pretend to have it figured out.
