“Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet Your footprints were unseen” (Psalm 77:19). As an LCMS missionary here in Germany, I have two tasks: to bring Christ in Word and Sacrament to Persian immigrants, but also to teach at Riga Luther Academy, the online seminary in Latvia that we support. I try to combine these tasks, keeping an eye out for mature Christians from the Persian community who might be interested in deeper instruction, to someday become catechists or even pastors. I have a strong hunch that the Lord was recently guiding a Lutheran refugee, and me too. At a church luncheon, I sat across from an Iranian man who has been one of our Farsi-German interpreters for some time, occasionally even filling in to teach Bible class if one of us pastors is not available. “Ali” had been on my list for some time, but I had never gotten around to asking him whether he might be interested in continuing Lutheran education. And so, when I posed that very question, he looked up from his meal, with eyes about as big as the bowl of khoresht-e fesenjan in front of him. “This is from the Lord…” he exclaimed. Just last week, as he went on to explain, he had a video chat with his brother and his mother in Iran, both secret Christians. They had suggested that he should look into taking classes somewhere to increase his knowledge of Christianity because they both think that he would make a wonderful lay leader or even pastor. Isn’t it amazing how the Lord often guides us invisibly? Sometimes we can detect His guidance in hindsight. But whether He leads us through tribulation as in Psalm 77, when He led Israel through the Red Sea, or whether He simply walks alongside us through the twists and turns of everyday life, it is so comforting to know that the Lord Jesus is guiding us, even unseen.
The Tiews in Germany 