Chaotic surrender

"Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."

Amil, a teen with a youthful face, grew up up in cardboard hut, surviving solely on bits of flat bread, pick pocketing in the dense city center of Cairo, and three eastward prayers between sunrise and sunset.

Amil's dark features were tense as he tucked his head between his skinny knees, crouching in the dark, endless corridor.

An eternal waiting room, smothered him.

Whispers of the unseen ricocheted off the walls around Amil. Rumors, snippets of conversations about Allah and his son, a god who Amil had never heard of, called Jesus.

Fear twisted in his gut, who was this Christ, the whispers claimed those who had known this Jesus would be invited to live eternally with Allah.

Pools gather around Amil, tears shed by him and others forming tiny rivers down the middle of the flat corridor. He could feel the presence of people around him, all mumbling in their own language. And yet strangely, he understood it all.

Suddenly the darkness was pushed away, it fled into nothing and was replaced by white hot light, piercing Amil's eyes...he kneeled as only he knew how, and began to chant in respectful consternation. A hand, expansive as the ocean, tenderly placed a warm shelter over his head and asked Amil, will you deny yourself and follow me?

Jesus, Yeshua, stood with strong and gentle arms spread wide in an anticipating hug, Amil wept.

Death had come, robbing him in the night from a life of poverty.

Amil clasped the arm of Christ and pleaded, " Allah, Yeshua, I want you."