Something strange happened the day before the terrorist attacks on 9/11—I received a warning from heaven.
Opening my Bible to 2 Chronicles 20:2 (NASB1995), I read, “‘A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea.’” King Jehoshaphat had proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah after learning his enemies were marching toward him to ambush his people. He gathered the men, women, and children in the house of the Lord and prayed, “‘O our God, will You not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You’” (v. 12).
The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, who then prophesied:
“Listen, all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not fear or be dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours but God’s … You need not fight in this battle; station yourselves, stand and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out to face them, for the Lord is with you” (vv. 15, 17).
Early the next morning, King Jehoshaphat stationed the singers and praisers before the army. “When they began singing and praising, the Lord set ambushes against the sons of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; so they were routed” (v. 22).
As I read, I heard in my spirit, “Do this. Praise me. This is your part in the battle.”
Puzzled, I answered aloud. “But Lord, we are not at war.”
September 11, 2001
The next morning, unsettling news swept through the office. A plane had crashed into one of the New York City Twin Towers. I watched the footage in horror as a second airplane pierced the second tower. Both collapsed into flames, spewing a pulverized poison into the air. All the breath left my lungs. My heart went weak in the crush of an invisible hand. And I realized this was no accident.
Before the morning was over, a third plane struck the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. For the next weeks and months, I stayed glued to the television with the rest of America. We packed churches and gathered at candlelight vigils, mourning the nearly three thousand lives lost and honoring the heroes who ran into burning buildings or stormed a cockpit to stop the terrorists from driving another stake into our hearts.
In the aftermath, we turned our attention toward a rugged patch of land on the other side of the planet—a place where the Taliban had harbored the architects of this terror, a regime that ruled in the name of God but seemed to have bubbled up from hell itself.
Troubled by the revelation of this dystopian society on the planet we shared, I devoured every news article, book, and documentary I could find on Afghanistan. Then I discovered Saira Shah’s documentary, Beneath the Veil: Inside the Taliban’s Afghanistan.
One story in particular left me shattered.
An Afghan mother was home alone with her daughters—ages nine, twelve, and fifteen—when Taliban fighters commandeered her house.
One of the girls later recalled, “My mother cried and pleaded with them. ‘You have taken my husband prisoner; where should I take my children in the snow?’”
They shot her. The girls remained trapped with their mother’s killers for two days while her body grew cold in the courtyard. When the interviewer asked what the men had done to them, silent tears streamed down their faces.
My tears were not so silent. Something broke open inside of me, and sobs shook my body as I fell to my knees on my living room floor.
God in heaven, this ought not be. How many other girls are in trouble?
Everything in me wanted to whisk those girls out of danger to someplace safe and never let anyone hurt them again. But they lived half a world away, and I was no one special—an ordinary woman without means to do much more than pay my rent and put a little in savings each month.
So I did the only thing I knew to do. I voiced my desperation to the heavens. “God, is there anything I can do?”
The question hung in the air with me unaware it would alter the course of my life.
Years later, I would recognize my prayer that day—an offering of the little I had and the little I was—as the first wobbly step across a high wire to Afghanistan with nothing but God’s outstretched hand to steady me.
[excerpt from Jewels in the Rubble: Unfinished Miracles in Afghanistan—a Memoir of Faith, Hope, and Courage by Jana Harp Burson]
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