Listen to the Whisper of God

When has God’s whisper moved you in an unexpected, but vital direction? Asheritah Ciuciu shares her remarkable story about the power of a whisper.

Elisa

Listen to the Whisper of God

By Asheritah Ciuciu

“Go, talk to the lady at the counter.”

The whisper took my mom aback. She looked around the airport, taking in the empty chairs around her as tourists rushed out the revolving doors to get their first glimpse of the Acropolis and their first taste of baklava.

She wouldn’t get to experience Athens because the lady at the counter was filling out her repatriation forms that very moment, forcefully sending her back to Romania, where the secret police would be waiting at the gate to arrest her and sentence her to a life in prison—all because she followed Jesus and invited others to follow him too.

She rubbed her rotund belly, worry filling her heart. She would never see her baby girl if they sent her back; the communist prison guards would put her daughter in an orphanage. She would never again see her husband and toddler son, hiding this very moment, hoping she would make a way for their escape to Athens. She’d probably die in the frozen trenches of the Danube River, forced to work until her bones gave out.

“Go, talk to her,” the whisper insisted. “Tell her your story.”

With racing heart and shallow breaths, my mother obeyed the whisper. “I don’t even speak Greek,” she whispered to the whisper, hauling herself to her swollen feet.

“Tell her your story,” the whisper repeated. “I will give you the words.”

She stepped up to the counter. My mother trusted the whisper even though she didn’t trust the lady at the counter.

She showed the woman a black-and-white photo of the husband and child she’d left behind, and in her broken English and French pieced together why she was fleeing communist Romania and what would await her if she were sent back. A life of forced labor, simply because she followed Jesus and invited others to follow him too.

And that December day in 1987, a miracle happened in a small cubicle in the airport in Athens, Greece. The hard heart of this airline employee softened as she leaned in. “Tell me more,” she said.

Twenty-one years after my mother’s miraculous deliverance, she took me back to Athens to meet that same woman—Fanny—whose name I carry as my middle name, to walk the halls of the crisis pregnancy center that housed my mother in the weeks leading up to her labor and delivery, to sit in the sacred space where a scared twenty-one-year-old pregnant girl listened to a still, small voice.

The three of us sat around Fanny’s dining room table, enjoying an authentic Greek meal.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be there,” Fanny told me as she dished out homemade eggplant papoutsakia at her dining room table. “My shift had ended an hour before, so imagine how annoyed I was when my supervisor gave me extra paperwork to extradite this pregnant foreigner to her homeland.”

“But God kept you there,” my mom said, filling up the water glasses. “For me. For us.”

Fanny laughed as she put her arm around my mother. “No one else in that airport knew the people I knew and could call in the favors that I called. And that,” she said, locking eyes with me, a stranger and yet her goddaughter, “is how your mother came to live here for a year.”  I stopped setting the table, mesmerized by her piercing gaze. “That is how you were born here.”

Sitting at that table with Fanny and my mother, I felt overwhelmed by the power and tender love of God. The One who would hear the cries of a lonely and unknown girl far from home. The One who would soften a tired and overworked airline employee’s heart to take time to listen to a story. The One who would whisper into the chaos of an international airport to save a life.

This is our God. The One who delights in you and longs for you to hear his tender whispers guiding you in the way you should go.

Adapted from Delighting in Jesus: Rhythms to restore joy when you feel burdened, broken,

or burned-out by Asheritah Ciuciu (© 2024). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.

Asheritah Ciuciu is a bestselling author, national speaker, and host of the Prayers of REST podcast. Asheritah is the author of many books, most recently, Delighting in Jesus. Her other books include Full, Prayers of Rest, and Unwrapping the Names of Jesus. A Romanian missionary kid, she's passionate about helping people around the world enjoy Jesus through creative spiritual habits. Asheritah is married to her high school sweetheart, and together they raise their three spunky kiddos in NE Ohio. Learn more about Delighting in Jesus and discover your creative devotional type at delightinginjesus.com.