Nihad was a Kurdish man from Iraq, and he was in trouble. A politically motivated arrest had landed him in a Syrian prison, in a cell less than a meter wide, in pain, sinking into depression. Before he was arrested, someone had given him a book by Billy Graham. At the back of it was a prayer.
In the cell he prayed a sentence that had no theology in it, only desperation. "Jesus, if You are real, help me."
A man in white with a bowl of oil Then he saw it. "A person in white entering my prison cell carrying a bowl of olive oil." He knew, from that book, who it was. The figure spoke to the broken man on the floor. "You are My beloved, and I love you so much." Nihad has never gotten over those words. They still comfort him, he says, all these years later.
He had read the prayer of salvation at the back of the Graham book. "That may have been the key," he said, "that opened my spirit to hear God."
Six months after his release, Nihad was leading. He became a Kurdish ministry director and now carries his story around the world, telling other Kurds that the God who walked into his cell can walk into theirs. No wall is thick enough to keep Jesus out. Not a prison wall. Not the one around your heart.
