Making a deliberate decision

A large metal shipping container is an unlikely prison. Especially when it’s been plonked, quite deliberately, in the middle of the Eritrean desert. Baking hot by day; freezing cold at night, it’s a living hell hole, unsuitable for human habitation.

When Helen, an Eritrean Gospel singer, is arrested for sharing her faith in Jesus, and for releasing religious music, she is locked inside this shipping container. Overcrowded, filthy dirty, and infected with insects, she is beaten about the head, tortured mercilessly, and deprived of adequate food, water and sanitation.

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She has been specifically targeted.

Partly because she belongs to a church denomination, banned by the Eritrean regime because of its belief in miracles. Partly because her music is popular, attracting huge support across the country. Partly because, wherever she travels, she preaches the Good News of Jesus.

Before her arrest, her Eritrean church has been experiencing a huge revival, with thousands of people coming to faith in Christ. It is in this context that the authorities have been clamping down – arresting those they deem to be perpetrators, holding them in arbitrary detention, incarcerating them indefinitely.

Woe betide anyone who dares to ask for a charge or trial.

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In her unlikely shipping container prison, Helen is put under immense, ongoing pressure to reject her Christian convictions. “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,” she declares, defiantly refusing to recant her faith in Jesus.

In the darkest depths of her shipping container jail, she makes a deliberate decision.

She decides to focus on God, and not on her circumstances. She chooses to pray. She chooses to sing. She chooses to worship Jesus. And six times a day, she leads her fellow prisoners in praise and prayer.

Her decision reaps dividends and the atmosphere shifts inside the shipping container.

God supernaturally strengthens and sustains her, using her to encourage and minister to those around her.

Even in the moments when her body is at breaking point, her spirit sings on – and God gives her peace, power and purpose that surpass human understanding.

He also gives her a brand new song – a song of justice, hope and freedom.

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Unbeknownst to Helen, many Christians around the world have been mobilised. Standing together in solidarity, they are praying for her in captivity, and campaigning for her release.

I am one of them.

Later, much later, when I discover that my prayers and petitions might have made a difference, I am moved to tears.

Who I am that God should use me to bring ‘lightthroughthecracks’ to an unknown Eritrean woman, holed up inside a shipping container, stranded in the middle of the desert? 

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Nearly three years on, when death is deemed imminent, she is released. “The only reason they let you go is when they torture you to death,” she says. “They don’t want you to die in prison. It’s not their responsibility, so they send you home to die.”

Unable to walk, and suffering severe kidney problems, exacerbated by lack of access to medical care, she is so ill that her new-found freedom nearly fails.

When security forces continue to harass her, she heads for neighbouring Sudan, with the help of some sympathetic immigration officers, from where she applies successfully for asylum in Europe.

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If you want to hear more of the story, simply set aside five minutes of time, and use it to listen to this recording, made late last year: