Happy Easter, from Albania FIJ

 

Happy Easter, from Albania  Faith in Jasper Article

 

Shortly before the war in Kosovo erupted, I and the girl who would become my wife were in neighbouring Albania, poorest of all European countries. The town we were stationed in was at the end of the road, high in the dusty hills where two rivers joined: one cold and clear from a spring somewhere deep and the other muddy and warm, eroding the land. 80% of the population was unemployed, living in Communist-built apartment blocks, sending sons to work illegally in Greece and Italy.

 

This farming village had been built up with a few dummy factories to divert attention from the fact that the town an hour away had an underground armaments manufacturing plant. Now the charade was over, now the factories were gutted, now the communist dictator was dead, now the doors to the world were open, but what attraction did Albania have for the world?

 

For hundreds of years the Ottoman Turks had dominated the country, using sabers to help convince Orthodox and Catholic people to re-think their beliefs. Then, after WWI the nation knew a short period of freedom until the spawn of Marx and Lenin brought a godless revolution to the land. Albania became the world’s most militantly atheistic state. Churches closed. Pastors perished.

 

Aftermath: the bullies are gone, but the children don’t know what to believe. The jaded generation of elders can’t help them in their quest. We came to tell them some good news, the contents of Easter. They lapped it up, over 200 kids crowding ‘round us, but then we left. No church, no pastor. But into this tomb of a town some new life came. A fellow Albanian was raised up to speak Hope. We received a letter telling us his story. His name was Ari, and his credentials didn’t seem too good. Former occupation: mobster, drug dealer. Training: limited, no degree.

 

I’m writing about Easter here. This is my point: If you want to get beyond the eggs and the bunny, if you want to drink from the clear stream and not the muddy, then you have to have your own death-resurrection epiphany. Sometimes it just happens, sometimes you have to go searching for it.

 

 Ari’s first experience of a church and Christianity was in the city of Berat. Sunday morning - he brazenly walks into a service and grabs a pretty girl by the arm, a life of prostitution his ignoble aim. The pastor, brave man, gently lays his hand on the thug and asks him if he could first pray for him. Ari allows him to and immediately hits the floor - something happens: he sees into the deep and in that mysterious place he encounters One who is alive forevermore. “He is not dead, He is risen!”, exclaimed the angel at Jesus’ tomb. Ari knows this now, and will never be the same.

 

Call it delusion, if you will, but that Albanian gave up a lucrative career and a macho image to become a humble and impoverished follower of the One whose death and resurrection slapped him in the face that day at church. Now he pastors a church, speaking into the void and despair. Now he tells kids about Jesus. Dead and dusty towns, dead and dusty hearts: Easter can make all things new.

 

Pastor Richard Bowler                

Jasper Park Baptist Church