Prayer About Kidnapping

No one can be beyond the Christ—not even some kidnappers. A scary situation is resolved through prayer.

By Jessica Morse, HI

Categories: Jesus (Parables), Safety

Jessica Morse worked in Iraq as history was being made. As we know, such times are often violent. She was there when the Iraqis went to the polls and voted in their new government and left right before the surge. The Bible was a source of comfort and healing for her, especially in emergency situations. Below, she shares a story about the power of prayer directed towards a particularly intense situation -- a colleague's father had been kidnapped.
Marjorie Foerster Eddington

When I was over in Iraq, I found Jesus' parable of the lost sheep to be tremendously helpful. One day, we were sitting at our desks, and one of my Iraqi colleagues started screaming because she had just found out that her dad had been kidnapped. She felt as if she had been told that her father had been killed. Her dad was a doctor, and recently there had been a series of kidnappings of doctors who were held for ransom and then killed.

I took a moment to go home and pray quietly. The story that came to me was Jesus' parable of finding the lost sheep. The shepherd has counted 99 sheep; he's missing one. Rather than counting it as lost, the shepherd goes out to search for the sheep and won't rest until he finds it. When he does, he rejoices. The story showed me how God brings each one of us home; we're each important, not just an anonymous member of the flock.

When I initially thought of the story, I was thinking of my colleague's father being the lost sheep. Then I started thinking about the kidnappers each being the lost sheep. I knew the Christ was reaching out to the kidnappers, even though it seemed they were not listening to God. One of the concerns was that the kidnappers were acting in the name of God. I realized we all believed in the "same" one God -- the God of Abraham. That's whom they were appealing to when they prayed to Allah.

As I continued to pray, I thought that just as they were appealing to that one God, so the Christ idea was finding them and bringing them back to the fold. The next morning, we found out that my colleague's father had been released; he was safe. There had been a change of thought in the kidnappers' consciousness, and they spared the father's life. God saved him. For me, this has been a strong example of the power of the Christ.