Abraham & Islam
During Easter 2008, pope benedict baptized an Italian journalist who was a Muslim - Magdi Allam.
Magdi Allam has been very vigorous in his exposure to the public of the intrinsic violent nature of Islam. Due to this his life has been in danger as there are Muslim groups out to terminate him.
Yesterday, one of the Bible readings related the story of Abraham having left Babylon for Canaan as God had ordered. At the age of 75, God promised to make him the Father of many nations - and he was still childless at that age. Imagine the faith he must have had.
Very often, this is the image of Abraham we have - one who trusted God 200%. We forget that 20 years after God had promised him a genealogy, he and Sarah were still without children. It was at this point that Sarah asked Abraham to have a child with Haggai.
The question is who lost faith in God - Sarah or Abraham? Does Abraham's acceptance of Sarah's belief that God will not give them a child indicate that he shared the same belief?
It sure does and that's the reason God ticked him off and cursed the relationship between Ishmael's descendents and Isaac's. Doubting God's promises and taking things into our own hands always brings about negative repercussions.
Just imagine - if Abraham AND Sarah had even 110% faith in God's promises, Islam would not be around today!
All of us try to have faith in God and we all struggle. The only one who may have struggled and succeeded in remaining fully trusting of all of God's promises was mother mary. No wonder she's God's favorite creature.