Allāh our Abba

One of the cutest things I've experienced here, on a couple of occasions while out and about, has been hearing a little girl getting the attention of her father by calling, "Abba!"

For those who don't understand the significance, in the Bible we're told how the Holy Spirit inspires us to call God "Abba" - the Hebrew for "Dad" (e.g. Galatians 4:6). So it helps me to more deeply feel the meaning of the word when I hear it used in its everyday context like that.

The language I'm most likely to hear on the street, in our immediate neighbourhood at least, is Hebrew; but when I go to one of the churches here in Jerusalem, the most likely language I'll hear is Arabic, because most of the local Christians are Arabs. And that means that in church, at Mass and at other times of prayer, you hear the word "Allah" a lot.

That might surprise some people, because the impression is often that "Allah" is a Muslim term for God; but in fact the use of the name for the one true God pre-dates Mohammed, and it was used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians before ever Islam was thought of.

So it's quite legit, even if something of a mish-mash of languages, to refer to "Allah our Abba".