By Ken Smitherman, President ACSI (retired 2009)
I recently had the privilege of reading a new book which so impacted me that I am dedicating this edition of Christian School Comment to three important issues addressed in it. Prisoners of Hope tells the phenomenal story of Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, two American missionaries arrested by the Taliban government for alleged proselytizing in Afghanistan. Most of the world is familiar with their story, including their remarkable rescue some three months later.
I am not so intrigued by the adventure or the intense drama of a close call with a death sentence as I am with the moving account of these two young women. In their own words they recount God’s call on their lives, the power of prayer, and their testimony of seeing God at work—the three issues I bring to your attention.
These issues are too often relegated to the past or are seen as something in the lives of saints who seem far removed from what we call real life. I don’t want to "spoil the story" by rehearsing it in any detail, but I do want to draw your attention to the lives of two individuals who step out of the world and culture as we have come to accept it. These young women share their personal testimony of lives transformed by the power of God through the life-changing experience of accepting Jesus Christ as personal Savior and committing their lives to following Him— surrendering themselves to serve others, particularly in what is often considered one of the most dismal parts of the world.
God’s call on their lives. While most people today focus on moving to the right neighborhood and the right house, Dayna Curry shares, "As I prepared to move to Kabul in August 1999, I envisioned a simple life of helping the poor. I also planned to pray for Afghanistan—I strongly believed prayer would make a difference for the Afghan people. The country was under tight religious restriction, so I knew I would not be able to share my faith openly. I wasn’t sure how I would fare without being able to talk about Jesus, but I thought if I could look just one desperate widow in the eyes and tell her God loved her, then the time would be worth it."
“I was so disappointed in myself. Why was I falling apart? ‘Lord, change me!’ I wrote. ‘Let me be so free that I could lay my life down for my friend [and] even my enemy.’ ” —Heather Mercer
This goal presents a whole new definition of what’s important—"If I could look just one desperate widow in the eyes and tell her God loved her, then the time would be worth it." Perhaps, just perhaps, this goal is getting nearer to a real understanding of what God has called us to—sometimes at a high cost, as seen in the life of this young woman who celebrated (so to speak) her thirtieth birthday as a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The power of prayer. Many times I was deeply moved as the role of prayer was played out in this true-life drama. Heather and Dayna both reflected that "all through the spring and summer of 2001, our community prayed deeply for Afghanistan. The nation was suffering a severe drought, famine, war between the Taliban and Northern Alliance opposition, and an enduring wave of drug addiction fueled by the vast poppy-growing industry. People were dying—both physically and emotionally— or they were fleeing to already overwhelmed refugee camps in neighboring countries. Few children attended school. No women were being trained as physicians. What would happen to the next generation? We asked ourselves: Could a country be more desolate than this one?
"It was early summer when we began to pray with fresh confidence that Afghanistan would experience a new day, and we sensed that a change for the nation was on the horizon.…"
Even during their imprisonment they focused greater prayer energy on the people and nation they had come to serve than on the desperate plight in which they found themselves.
Seeing God at work. The many vignettes showing God at work and their intimate part in that work makes for a moving account by these two refreshing and vibrant Jesus followers living in a difficult land. And then to read of the day they walked free of their Taliban captors, the day before they were whisked away by American rescue helicopters: Though they were in essence free, they were still in a very unstable environment. Dayna writes:
I turned to Heather: "I feel like we’re in the middle of a movie."
"God is good," she said.
Yes, I thought. God was so good to let us participate in this moment. We were getting to be a part of what we longed to see—a new day for Afghanistan, a new day for the Afghan people. If we had been given our own way, we would have been released from prison much sooner, but we would have missed this incredible experience. We were living out the very thing for which we had prayed. We were in the middle of it all.
I urge you to get Prisoners of Hope, published by WaterBrook Press, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2002. Read it with or to your family. Go ahead, fly in the face of culture and challenge your children to understand twenty-first-century Christ following, His marvelous provision, and His satisfying joy—all in the "wrong neighborhood."
Following God Instead of the World 34.3