Wow -- we just played a 2 hour outdoor worship concert for over 1,000 people on a softball field in Maadi -- right across from an influential radical Mosque -- during Ramadan. It was one best concerts of my life! It was possibly the most appreciated. We had many coming up and hugging us and thanking us afterwards -- asking us to please come back soon. I don't know if they had heard much like it before.
The radical Imam didn't like it -- right after we started he responded with long and loud calls to prayer and readings from the Koran, even though it was long after the last prayer time. The locals said they had never heard anything like it. Our sound system was louder than his, so it wasn't too much of a distraction, but it felt like dueling banjos. He finally stopped during our intermission and went home, so we had the second half all to ourselves.
A big part of the crowd were the greater Maadi community expatriates. But an equal part were Egyptian locals, and lots of them came up close to the front. I was playing more for them -- and the people in the windows. There are apartment buildings behind the softball field and we could see lots of people watching from their windows. They must have wondered what in the world this was. But they stayed in their windows.
On the spiritual side, I was expecting more of a clash. But the Lord's presence came more as sweetness, freedom, openness and light than conflict. Something about the local religion is hard, heavy, cold -- like stone. The contrast was clear, and I loved seeing the Egyptian locals dancing up front in delight and the others watching from their windows. I wonder how this will impact them. I certainly feel that we opened a window -- at least for a while.
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