by Lela Gilbert
I’ll probably be dead before he gets out.
Thoughts of cancer, obscure muscle diseases, and heart trouble crept into her mind in the darkest hours of the night. Panic gripped her from time to time. She would awaken from a sound sleep sweaty, shaking and nauseous.
Worst of all, she had lost her sense of hope. She had learned too quickly how devastating false hope could be to her. So, little by little, she had rejected all hope. There seemed to be safety in that posture, at least from disappointment. But the gathering darkness was potentially more dangerous than any deferred dreams could ever have been.
She steeled herself this Sunday morning for the trip to Erica’s church. There were a thousand reasons not to go, and Betty could have kicked herself for not thinking of one when Erica invited her. In the first place, she had no idea what an Episcopal church service was like. In the second, she didn’t want to hear the usual passages about “Waiting on the Lord.” She’d heard them all. She’d tried to believe them. She was still waiting.
Just before eleven, she parked in front of a well-tended stone sanctuary, got out of her car, and all but dragged herself inside. The pain that had stabbed through her chest for months gnawed at her again. Erica found her just as she walked through the tall, wooden doors. They embraced. “You’ve lost weight, Betty.” Erica’s eyes reflected concern at her friend’s haggard appearance. As they found a seat together, Betty noticed that the building was nearly full.
Erica knelt and prayed for a few moments before she sat down on the pew. Somehow Betty wanted to join her, but she didn’t. Things were already more different than she’d imagined, and the service hadn’t even begun. A guitarist, a flautist, and a keyboard player stood at the front of the church, waiting for something.
Betty started when a voice from the back said, “Would the congregation please rise?”
Everyone stood.
A teenager in a white robe with shoulder-length hair proudly carried a golden cross down the center aisle. He was followed by two white-robed acolytes and three priests. Some of the older people bowed when the cross passed. For some reason, their ritual brought tears to Betty’s eyes.
A priest said, “Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
The people responded, “And blessed be His kingdom, now and forever. Amen.”
With that the music began—beautiful songs of praise and thanksgiving. Some of them were familiar to Betty, others were not. After the music, there were Scripture readings and a brief lesson.
Ken Townsend’s sermon had nothing to do with waiting on the Lord. Or victorious faith. Or hostages. Perhaps that’s why Betty gave him her full attention. The message was on the Word of the Lord—but Ken was talking about more than reading the Bible.
“The Word of God, spoken to our hearts, is His most vital provision for our walk through life. Why do we go through difficulties? Holy Scripture tells us this:
“‘Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna . . . to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.’
“No matter what we’re going through, God speaks to us in our hearts. But we must quiet ourselves to hear Him. Yes, we have His written Word, an objective truth on which all other revelation must agree. But God has words for you alone, about your own journey through the desert. About your own hunger and thirst. About your own needs being met.
“‘Be still,’ He says to you today, ‘and listen to my voice.’”
Betty found herself moved to tears by Ken’s teaching. She remembered hearing the voice of God herself. Why had He fallen silent during these last, terrible months? The truth was troubling. Maybe He hadn’t been silent at all. Perhaps she had simply refused to listen.
The congregation prayed for all the hostages, and Betty was surprised at their familiarity with the subject. The people seemed to know not only the captives’ names, but the names of their family members too. Several people also had a keen political awareness of the hostage dilemma that provided them with specific insight as they prayed.
When the Eucharist began, more tears accompanied Betty to the altar. She remembered sharing communion with Jon, both in church and privately. Would it offend God if she ate and drank for both of them?
Lord, I can only hope Jon is alive. But if he is, I want You to strengthen him with this bread and wine too. There’s no way he can take communion where he is. So since we’re supposed to be one, please allow me to take it for him.
She took the bread in her cupped hands and put it in her mouth. Although her eyes were closed, when she drank the wine she was warmed by an unanticipated awareness that burst into her mind with blinding rays of hope.
Jon is alive. Of course he’s alive. There’s no question about it.
After the service, several people asked Betty if they could pray with her. By that time she had no reason to resist.
She knelt in front of the altar and was soon surrounded by eight or ten parishioners, including the Walkers and two other couples from Erica’s dinner party. They placed their hands on her and began to pray, very softly so she couldn’t hear.
Lord, I’m listening, if You have anything to say.
A man spoke quietly, “I believe the Lord would say this to you, ‘You have my Spirit within you,
‘You have my Spirit within you,
And my Spirit is grieved with my son Jon’s plight.
Just as Jon’s love has opened up your heart.
So your love is the key to his deliverance.
Pray for my son.
I know I can trust you to do this.
Bind the strong Man,
Pray unfailingly for him, and I will accomplish his
deliverance
Through your prayers,
Your words,
And your heart of love.
I will deliver my son.
Both of you will hunger and thirst no more.’”
A woman quietly asked, “May I read a Scripture?”
“Please do.”
“I’m reading from Psalm 18.”
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
He drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
From my foes who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
But the Lord was my support.
He brought me into a spacious place;
He rescued me because he delighted in me.”
Betty looked at the people around her. “When that message said, ‘I will accomplish this through your prayers and your words,’ I couldn’t help but think of something. I haven’t told anybody this, but . . .”
Feeling foolish but determined, Betty explained about the letter and the poem she had sent. She also told the men and women about the song that had been recorded and about the special words Brian had placed at the end.
“I’ve heard that song!” one woman exclaimed. “And I wondered about those words. I love it!”
Ken Townsend was emphatic. “We’re going to pray that Jon gets both messages from you. I believe the Lord wants Jon to hear from you. That’s what He seems to be saying.”
And so they prayed, spontaneously, one after another.
“Lord, I pray that You will somehow get that letter and poem into Jon’s hands.”
“Lord, let Jon hear the song and know for sure that Betty wrote it for him.”
“Father, enable him to hear from You through these messages that You are caring for Him. That You have a plan for his deliverance. That You haven’t forgotten him and neither has Betty.”
“I have a sense that Jon feels like Betty may be angry with him or that he’s somehow unsure of her love.”
“So do I.”
“Lord, en
courage Jon’s heart. Help him realize that he is loved, prayed for, and never forgotten, and that Betty is waiting for him wholeheartedly. Assure him of her faithfulness, Lord.”
“Yes, Lord, let him know she’s with him and encourage her, too, Father. Don’t let her feel that You’ve forgotten. Answer her prayers, Lord . . .”
As the intercessions continued, half a world away a young Arab nervously pulled a crumpled envelope out of his jacket pocket.
“Shhh . . .” he warned the chained figure lying at his feet as he handed the envelope to him. “Don’t say anything or they’ll beat me. This came from a friend of mine.”
Looking around furtively, the guard retreated from the shadowy room, leaving the man alone with the envelope. Listening for a moment to assure himself that no one else was around, he shoved his blindfold up just enough to see out from under it. He held the envelope up to a shaft of dim light radiating from some unseen bulb.
Betty’s handwriting, he thought in amazement. That’s impossible. How on earth?
Before he read a word, Jon acknowledged to himself that the letter’s arrival was a miracle in itself. As quietly as he could, he opened the envelope and strained his eyes to read the hastily written lines.
“Dear Jon, I don’t know whether you’ll ever receive this letter or not . . .
He read each sentence again and again, trying to remember every word.
“. . . Don’t be afraid. God is with you even if you don’t feel His presence. And be completely assured of my love for you. It is written in my heart.”
For the moment he couldn’t read the poem; his eyes were swimming and the light was terribly dim. But for the first time in weeks, hope stirred inside him. Hope that Betty would wait. Hope that God really hadn’t forgotten him. Hope that there just might be a future after all.
He squinted at the poem, unable to grasp anything more than the last line.
“Still burn, Love. Never die!”
I won’t, Betty.
He hid the papers under his mat, praying that no one would find them until he could read the poem and memorize it and the letter. And there in the grim twilight of his captivity, Jon made a grim vow to himself.
I’m not going to die. I’m going to get out of here. And by God, I’m going to live!
6
I feel with the families of the hostages, and I am doing all I can to reach a happy ending,’ Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, spiritual leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, said in a recent statement.
“‘I will exert all my energies in this direction. I have sought to close this file with all the means that I have, and I am still working on exerting pressure to reach a humanitarian solution to the problem,’ the Shiite Muslim leader pledged. Hezbollah, or Party of God, is the umbrella organization for pro-Iranian groups believed holding most of the foreign hostages, including seven Americans.”
Jim Richards was leaning against the doorway to Betty’s office and reading aloud from the morning paper.
“So what does all that mean?” Betty wasn’t quite sure why the article, which was hidden somewhere on page 33 of Section A, had made such an impression on Jim.
“Fadlallah is an important man in this situation, Betty. He doesn’t want to say so, because that makes him responsible. But if he’s talking about humanitarian solutions, then maybe there’s something we can do about Jon’s situation.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Suppose we work out some kind of a relief shipment to this Hezbollah faction in Lebanon as a goodwill gesture. Maybe it would speed up the hostages’ release. If we could do something significant enough to get Hezbollah’s attention, it could take the whole hostage issue out of the political arena and make it a humanitarian cause.”
“I thought Hezbollah was just a bunch of terrorists.”
“Hezbollah is a faction—a group of people with a political point of view. It’s made up of men and women, boys and girls, grandmas and grandpas. Like everybody else in Lebanon, they face a constant threat of violence, and to make matters worse a lot of them live in extreme poverty.”
Betty tried to envision a group of nice, everyday struggling people who just happen to kidnap strangers as an avocation. “Maybe we could do something for the Hezbollah children, then. I’m not too sure I want to get involved in feeding a band of thugs.”
“Betty, there’s more to the story than that. Besides, if Christians don’t build bridges of peace, who will?”
She shrugged. “So what do we do?”
“Well, I made a few calls this morning. Apparently there’s a crying need all over Beirut for dehydrated milk. And, believe it or not, Hezbollah has a humanitarian foundation of its own—they even operate orphanages.”
“How nice of them. What do they do, take care of the orphans left over from their car bombings or something?”
Jim was unamused and a silent reprimand registered on his face. “If we can raise enough money to buy and ship a gift of dry milk to Hezbollah, I think it might pave the way for some releases. We’ll make a statement of our own, saying that we agree with Fadlallah—the hostages are a humanitarian issue—and we want to do our part in resolving it.”
“I guess hostages for milk is a kinder, gentler deal than hostages for TOW missiles. But wouldn’t it be the same as paying ransom?”
“Of course not. It wouldn’t be a quid pro quo. It would be a gesture, a statement—nothing more. No guarantees. No strings. Just a bridge of peace.”
“So do you want me to help?”
“Well, of course you could help. In fact, I’ve been thinking that maybe you ought to set the Uganda report aside . . .”
Thank God.
“. . . and make some calls for me about this. Here’s what we’ll need to do.”
Betty quickly picked up a pencil and pad. Anything to get out of writing the Uganda report.
Jim was thinking out loud. “We need to find some substantial donors, and I’ve got a few ideas I’ll discuss with you. We need to research shipping into Beirut and ensuring that anything we send in there gets into the right hands. And we have to find some means of getting a statement to Fadlallah directly, accompanying the shipment, so he understands very clearly why we sent it.”
“This sounds like a lot of work, Jim.” Although Betty’s depression had waned significantly after the Orange Hills prayer service, a lingering fatigue remained.
Jim was a visionary, and he sometimes didn’t realize how hard every one around him struggled to bring his visions into reality. He gave her another mildly disapproving look. “Well, it’s worth it to me,” he said. “Is it worth it to you?”
“Of course it is, Jim.” Betty tried to hide her feelings, but she was aggravated by his words. She knew his big heart was in the right place, but sometimes he acted like no one else was quite as committed as he was.
After Jim left, Betty walked into Joyce Jiminez’ office and slumped into a chair without a word. “What’s wrong, Betty?”
“Jim has this idea about shipping dry milk into Lebanon . . .”
“I know. He’s been talking about it all morning.”
“I don’t know why, but it just sounds like a lot of work for no real purpose. Maybe I’m just tired . . .”
“No, you’re not just tired. You’re depressed and confused. But, frankly, I agree with Jim. I think it’s about time we tried to do something for Jon around here.”
Betty nodded. “I guess the hardest part of the whole hostage mess is wanting so desperately to do something and not being able to do anything. But what are the odds of this milk shipment ever happening? Or of it doing any good?”
“Well, it sort of reminds me of the old story about a guy stranded in a boat on a stormy sea. His philosophy was, ‘Pray toward heaven and row toward shore.’ Sometimes you have to do more than pray.”
Betty shook her head, smiled at Joyce, and went back to her office.
Maybe she’d taken “Be still and know that I am God” too much to heart. Or
maybe she just didn’t want to get her hopes up again. In any case, she cleared the Uganda materials off her desk, picked up a list of phone numbers from Jim, and started making calls.
By the end of the week, her two best leads for funding were a televangelist in Dallas named Ricky Simms and an ex-hostage named David Jacobsen. Jacobsen had no money of his own to donate, but he was aware of several private donors who might be interested in the project.
Simms had what was described as “big bucks” and seemed to object to his name being associated with a highly visible aid effort.
Meanwhile a cooperative ministry in British Columbia had put Jim in touch with a shipping company in Cyprus. The name of Hezbollah’s charitable foundation had been confirmed. And a source of dehydrated whole milk had been located in Switzerland.
As always, everything was easy to put together—except the funding. And that challenge had somehow fallen into Betty’s lap.
With every passing day, Betty was beginning to warm to the idea of the shipment. “But I’m not a fund raiser. I’m no good at this,” she fretted to Joyce.
“Nobody really likes fund raising,” her friend encouraged her. “Just remember, the money’s not for you. It’s for a very important cause. You really are the best person to do this, Betty. You’ve got a loved one trapped in Lebanon. People will listen to you.”
The flight to Dallas was uneventful, and when Betty checked into the hotel she felt rested enough to walk around and see a little bit of Texas. Unfortunately, there was nothing to see. The hotel was situated on a wide street, across from a pink motel. Flat, nondescript fields stretched out beyond the motel’s back fence. There were no shops, no restaurants, and no friends to call.
Disappointed, she returned to her room. After checking her answering machine at home, she turned on the television. Clicking through the channels, she stopped at the sight of a beaming, blond preacher. Sure enough, it was Ricky Simms. And he was talking about hungry children in Africa.
I must have missed the sermon, she reasoned. I guess this is the fund-raising part of the program.
Pathetic black children appeared on the screen, one after another. They were emaciated. Covered with flies. Clutching cups of porridge. Reaching out to the camera. These heart-rending segments were often punctuated by Ricky Simms’ twangy voice, reminding viewers that “for just $25 a month, you can change the life of one of these precious children. Your gift of $100 can feed four children for thirty days. Don’t stop and think, people. Write your check now, while it’s on your heart. Do it now!”
