Mitrovica, Kosovo. 29 October. 12:23:00.
Having worn a path around the building over many days, having hungered over it, having read repeatedly the one-hundred-nineteenth Psalm and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah before it, still had I not seen one such tower of Islam fall.
Friday prayer came. Rather, it was coming, and I languished late into the night over a burning desire to pray for the pit. Long after the sun, souls were called in their lethargic stupor there to be buried.
I went and prayed by the moon at some late dinner hour before Friday could fully come, and walked home hurting. The place remained unchanged in its murderous horror.
At the time of the midday Friday prayer, I left my station early to make the place. The previous Friday, I had forgotten the day, but felt moved as though I ought, and set out praying about the minarets. Matriculating, then, from every cardinal direction and all of the innumerable ones in-between, people arrived. Great, long mats were unrolled. Slowly accumulating were throngs — a thousand or more men — to pray inside and outside the building.
The reality is that it was almost entirely outside that they stood or sat, waiting… almost entirely outside that they pressed for position, for honour; to be first amongst the ants.
I kept to walking my dog-track around the grounds, amending its exact path with progressively wider concentric circles as the huddling mass swelled and pushed me further out on the streets.
Up kept this clip and the reading of the prophetic words of Isaiah for the duration. Once, I saw a young boy that I knew. He spoke to me, inquiring after what I was doing, and then took his seat, facing away from the mosque for the message. He puzzled after me, I could see, with each pass I made.
In my chest, there were two things fighting. I set out to let the Humiliator win. The weight of this prayer laboured to collapse my chest.
My throat hurt. Still the words came out. For those portions that I had taken down and swallowed, those that I had eaten often enough of to know by memory, I looked up and into the eyes of the whole flagellating mess. They were beside themselves to be seen of men. I recalled the feeling of that particular vanity.
A lukewarm uncertainty… room temperature milk. More such soft comforts to the death row inmate.
And as I thought on these things, it had got to where I could go no further.
I crouched down and wept.
See them, God… can you not see them…? They purpose themselves in flailing and sycophantic things as their oppression sees fit.
Please, Father, You must see them…
They do not know of the dark things that drown them.
My finger-place fell out of my Bible, and I knelt further to the reality of my heart’s state. I was exhausted. Unnaturally exhausted.
In front of me, three of the most elderly men in the crowd continued to pray as it cleared out.
Most are gone. Still, they are on their face, each man looking around a little when they come off of their forehead to find who is seeing their devotion.
My weeping came anew. I could no longer stay upright.
There I wept crouched or on my knees for a little longer. I could not steal back what this burden had siphoned, and I fought to keep the weight of all of their religious things on my shoulders.
This was the second of the two warring contemplations in my chest. For their vain oblation, I had hoped to shoulder for them a petition before the Lord. But no more can I shoulder their sin for but a moment than can they, by the power of their idolatry. In hope, I asked the Spirit to pray for them in the manner after which I could not see.
How He had caused me to long for them to know Him…
Later on, there would be someone of the local church to say that they had seen (in a vision that they believed to be of the Lord) the courtyard of that mosque drowning people. A swamp.
Over and over it played in my mind, men staggering with rent and diseased flesh into the putrid cauldron, bog bodies stiffly breaking the standing water’s surface, morass tree roots in their torment.
This is how it appeared. And for as long as we remained, I saw — with only the hope of better — the anguished and decomposing bodies of the power of that ideology return to the place of their drowning… not knowing that already they languish there, dead in spirit.
God redeem them.
Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
Isaiah 53:1
Pictured above is Isa Beg Mosque in Mitrovica, Kosovo, where the Lord led me pray.
Pictured below is an AI rendering of the mosque and a surrounding swamp.
Wow Isaak. This is what used to be called having a “burden” where the Lord calls you to intercede and you feel as if you must do so. To not pray, is not an option. The heaviness is too great. So cool. Thanks for being there and listening to Him.
What a description. I fear I am too complacent.
I did indeed, and do still, bear a burden for these people. I hope the Lord continues to prompt prayer for Kosovar salvation amongst many church bodies.
Thank you so much.
What we believe about ourselves is very often exceptionally true or exceptionally false. The Lord clarifies our own criticism of our efforts.
Love you very much. God bless.
Isaak, I cried with you…I could hear the speaker praying the call to prayer so vivid in mind.
Wow. A wonderful compliment.
I cannot make enough of the Spirit speaking through me, and helping me to recall things He did.
Thanks, mama. Love you.