A Life Weighed Down by Emptiness
Yousef opened the bottle of pills. There were plenty to do the job; but, before he did it, he felt obliged to do at least a cursory review of the twenty plus years he had lived. When he started mentally rewinding those years, they unraveled in a litany of failure after failure, disappointment after disappointment, defeat after defeat so he quickly wrote off that idea. Yousef had tried so hard to do everything right. He attended the mosque and recited his daily quranic prayers; but, by the time he was seventeen, Yousef had wailed himself off from family and would be friends. An emptiness starved his heart, and though he tried to fill it with everything from drugs to alcohol to gangs, nothing worked. That was why he started thinking about overdosing on pills. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the pleasant face of his grandfather materialised. His memories of the man were not extensive. He rarely saw his grandfather because Yousef lived in the Middle East and his grandfather had moved to the United States; but the thought of the man brought a smile to his face and a little hope to his heart.
Remembering the Salmon Story
Yousef remembered that his grandfather was a Christian and not a Muslim; and, he also remembered the time he told him the “salmon story.” When he was just a little boy, Yousef had climbed onto his grandfather’s lap while the man was watching television. The program was showing a scene of salmon swimming against the rapids of a stream. “Yousef,” he said to his grandson, “Christians are like those fish – always swimming against the current, against the world.”
On the Brink of a Choice
“The ways of the world are always against the ways of Christ; but, although they may struggle, the fish that swim against the current are full of life; and, those that swim easily downstream with the current, with the world: those fish are dead.” Remembering the story touched something deep within Yousef. He snapped the cap back onto the pill bottle. “I am on the brink of suicide,” he thought. “What do I have to lose by praying to this God of my grandfather?”
To be continued…
Date: 26th April 2025
Martyr: Yousef
Location: Not specified
Source: The voice of the martyrs
Author: Richard Wurmbrand
Suffering Saturday 140
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