grace

traffic is really congested these days around 1-2pm, because everything closes down early during ramadan and people are anxious to get home and either a:) cheat and eat/drink or b:) forget about how hungry they are and relax. we were on our way home yesterday in a sarvis, and our driver was very agitated. he attempted to blow by a guy in a truck who wasn't moving forward with the line of 50+ cars at the stop light. the guy in the truck accelerated to keep our car from being let in. this started a very heated argument between the two that included very many choice words between the windows of the two vehicles (thanks to the tower of babel i couldn't understand any of them). the other men in the sarvis with jessey and i were trying to encourage the driver to drop it and to pursue peace, but the driver was incessant. 30 seconds later, after we had pushed in front of the guy in the truck, the driver of the truck came up to the window of our car. not good. our driver started yelling immediately, caught off guard by the sudden presence of this guy he truly hated at his window. but something happened. the guy at the window was pursuing peace. he was trying to rectify the conflict, to make things right, to show grace to the sarvis driver and ask forgiveness...in the middle of traffic. as cars began to go again, they smiled, shook hands, and we pulled forward. what? normally i would be holding that grudge for at least a whole day, telling everyone about the idiot in the other car who did this or that. apparently, reconciliation is more important in this culture than in ours.
i learned a lesson in grace in a completely different way last night. we had dinner at some friends' house. the meal is pictured above. i know, it looks absolutely everything except appetizing. like bugs or green sausages or even worse. i've never been a truly adventurous eater. i'm not the most likely guy to eat tomato paste out of the can, if you know what i mean. but, after a while, you realize that the most gracious thing you can do is eat the food that is prepared for you. what is pictured is grape leaves rolled and stuffed with rice and meat (yeah, and it doesn't work to be a vegetarian and refuse the meal either). the bigger green things are vegetables called marrow (?). you pull out the insides and stuff them too, also stuffed with meat and rice. my friend worked on this meal, rolling each individual grape leaf, for 3 hours. i had to eat it. and it was good...much to my surprise.
learning lessons that i didn't know i needed to learn.