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We drove down the highway as fast as we could, trying to make ourselves a more difficult target to attack, tailgating the Humvee in front of us so a suicide car bomber could not come between us, and being tailgated by another Humvee. Sitting in front of me was a soldier monitoring the radio, who received messages from the Humvees ahead of us and yelled this information to the gunner and me.

I decided to fight off my sorrow by listening to some music on my MP3 player. My son-in-law, Eric, had loaded my player with about 1,000 songs before I left home. Since it was Sunday, I decided to listen to some praise music. The first song was by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir:

Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place; I can feel His mighty power and His grace: I can hear the brush of angels' wings, I see glory on each face; surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.

Speeding toward Baghdad, crammed into the back of a Humvee, I sensed the presence of God as never before. I felt enveloped by the presence of God—God around me, God above me, God in me. As tears ran down my dusty cheeks, I peered through the thick, bulletproof window at Iraqis in their flowing robes, their mud-walled houses, children at play, the tall and stately palm trees. And just as surely as I felt the presence of God in that Humvee, I sensed God's presence in all that I saw—here, in this desolate country, with the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Kurds. God was surely here. He loves Iraq.

Then I thought of what this convoy was doing, and the words of Jesus came to me: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). I was filled with a deep sense of peace. I was still worried about the road ahead, but I had a sense of contentment that everything was going to be fine, no matter what happened. I knew that God profoundly loved every person on both sides of this war.

This sense of peace and contentment lasted throughout my time in Iraq. It had nothing to do with bravery or courage on my part, but everything to do with the sense that God was with me, and that many people were praying for me.

I found one passage of Scripture, as paraphrased in The Message, especially encouraging:

"Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. … Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am" (Phil. 4:6-7, 11-13).

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