Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

I continued reading fervently. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness? Not ‘blessed are the righteous’ but ‘blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’? I hunger and thirst for righteousness, I do, but I can never attain it. God will bless me anyway? Who is this God who loves me so much, even in my failures?” Tears flowed from my eyes once more, but now they were tears of joy. I knew that what I held in my hands was life itself. This was truly God’s word, and it was as if I was meeting Him for the first time. I began poring over the Bible, absorbing every word as if it were water for my parched soul, a soul that had never before drunk from the fountain of life. As I read, I perused the study notes at the bottom of the page and cross-references in the margins, not willing to miss a single angle of a single verse. Questions would come into my mind, and within moments, either the text I was reading or its footnote would lead me to the answer. This happened more times than I could count. I could not put the Bible down. I literally could not. It felt as if my heart would stop beating, perhaps implode, if I put it down. I ended up skipping the whole day of school, but I really had no choice in the matter. The Bible was my lifeline.