Are Your Eyes Good

Greetings in the Lord!

After the season in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Lord gave me another opportunity to learn in-depth about the strongholds of jealousy and envy. In the fall the Lord sent me to play basketball in Syria for 10 months. When I first got there, I walked around town with my teammates and many times male onlookers said something to me in Arabic that sounded like the same phrase over and over. I asked my teammates what the guys were saying and they said, "They are saying, 'Allah protect you from the Eye.' It's what we say here."

Over time I came to learn about the ancient Babylonian tradition of 'Evil Eye' and 'Blue Eye,' which is positive. In their culture, jealousy and envy has such a stronghold on people that they actually ask Allah to protect those they discern would be harmed by the "evil eyes" of others. Probably, the male onlookers saw that I was an unsuspecting, attractive and affluent foreign woman and feared for my safety. Most likely they would not have said this if I was walking with a man, as they would have assumed he was my "protector." At any rate, I learned very quickly the truth of the proverb that says jealousy is more fierce than wrath.

In Lebanon, the men said to me, "God bless you," which I learned was actually more of a statement of 'You've been blessed by the Lord.' It was amazing how different the mentalities of Syria and Lebanon were-- night and day. The 'blessing' in Lebanon was such a comfort and reassured me that the Lord was indeed with me, while the other reminded me of the pervasive evil heart conditions and tempted me to be fearful.

~Be blessed and be a blessing.

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