An Afghan Woman's Cry to God...

After the fall of the communist government in Kabul in the year 1992, the Mujahideen groups started fighting among themselves over taking control of the city of Kabul. They fired thousands of rockets at each other and fired hundreds of thousands of bullets, killing many civilians, and destroying the city in the pursuit of power. Thousands of Kabul residents were killed and injured.

One day after the bombardment of the city, I was at the hospital when a bus brought many injured men, women, and children. There were also some who had died. They took those that needed urgent care to the surgery room on the third floor. I saw a woman without a head-covering, which is completely against the culture of Afghanistan, bare feet, and wailing. She was covered with dust as a result of a rocket, which had destroyed her mud house and had injured her husband. She did not even have time to put her head-covering on or put shoes on her feet but had rushed to the hospital. She was running up and down the stairs, crying loudly and asking for help for her badly injured husband.

She was shouting:

O God! O God! O God, where are you? Do you have eyes? Do you see? God, do you hear our cries? Do you have ears to hear us? Why are we in this darkness?

Thirty years later, I still remember her voice. It was not just her cry, an Afghan woman's cry to God. It was this whole scene of a sense of the absolute absence of God in the midst of her pain and her helpless wailing. Her questions were not only her questions. Her cry was Afghanistan’s cry and our nation's despair and despondency. Her questions became my questions and those of millions of other Afghans.

Many years passed. It was in 1999 when I first heard the Gospel and for the first time in my life, I found the answer to her questions and to mine. The question that haunted me, and still haunts Afghans around the world:

O God, where are you? Do you see? Do you care about us?

The answer to her question was "Immanuel", God is with us! In the midst of the darkest of nights, deepest of sorrows, and pain unimaginable, God is with us. He is not hiding. He is not far. He is with us, waiting to wipe away our tears. He awaits to break the darkness with His light and one day we will see how:

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; He burns the chariots with fire. Psalm 46:9

The presence of God in the midst of pain and the faithfulness of God in our suffering is the good-news response to that Afghan woman's questions. It is, in fact, the good-news response to all Afghan's questions, many of whom have experienced and continue to experience pain indescribable.

There is no other hope or good news for Afghans. It is our passions, joy, and response of gratitude to make this good news known to the unreached peoples of Afghanistan.