PROFILE August 8, 1988 Issue

Terrorism—what can I do?

Marilyn Crater

Sometimes we are apt to think we cannot heal something like terrorism because it is so widespread and comes in so many different forms. We say, "I am just one person—what can I do?" Marilyn Crater had this feeling, too, but she wrote us about an experience that led her to an answer to the question. The experience occurred during an airline flight from Cleveland to Los Angeles in the 1970s. What she learned about the power of prayer seemed so timely that we asked her to try to recapture the experience and to talk with us about some of the spiritual insights she gained.

While doing the last-minute things that everyone does to get ready for a trip, and again on the way to the airport, I prayed both for the harmony of the flight and for the whole trip from home to Los Angeles and back again. I felt a particular need to pray because of recently reported hijackings and bomb threats, as they were called by the press and the airlines.

I reasoned that there is no time or place when God is absent, and so there is no time or place where man is not protected by Him. As Psalm 91 puts it, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."^{ Ps. 91:1.}

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