Memories are joyful and painful, but we cannot live without them.
Let us pray* that we may never forget.
For leaders who send young men and women to war,
that their judgments be sound
and their motives be pure, we pray*.
For soldiers who lay down their lives for others,
that the love which inspires their sacrifice
be fulfilled in the love that surpasses all love, we pray*.
For soldiers who have been maimed or brutalized by war,
that our love for them may make their scars less hurtful
and make their brutality yield to the tenderness of returning love, we pray*.
For those who have been left behind,
that they may live on the strength of the love they knew, we pray*.
For those who suffer most from war,
that the homeless, the orphaned, the hungry, and the innocent
may help us turn from warlike ways to pursue the potential of peace, we pray*.
As we remember those who died in war for the cause of peace:
Lord, make us peacemakers.
As we look to the future of our children and grandchildren:
Lord, make us peacemakers.
As we think of the war-torn, blood-stained, sorrowful world:
Lord, make us peacemakers.
Lord, hear our prayer*
and come to us in perfect love, to drive away our fear;
in the name of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Amen.
*Meditate, hold in good and active thought.
or as John Kennedy said: “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”
Then there’s bush who said in one of his commencement speeches that the history books will look back and write that our invasion(my word) ‘will be America’s golden moment’….how can anyone be so deluded as to believe that the Iraq invasion will go down in history as ‘a golden moment’ for this country?
If my following actions are in any way a violation of site decorum and guidelines, I seek leniency for double-posting the comment below, which I had already shared on PastorDan’s Word for the Day. It just seemed most fitting to mention it again in the context of this diary.
__________________
As we reflect on the word for the week, may we all think of and/or pray for MN state Senator Becky Lourey, who lost her son Matthew this week when his helicopter was shot down in Iraq. Matthew is the third child Senator Lourey has lost.
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/11755374.htm
to the hundred thousand Iraqis and several million Vietnamese killed by Americans in these senseless wars.
It is a notable “lapse in memory” on this day of remembrance that they forget the victims.
the other day, here are a few more names of martyrs
The list is not complete. No one knows how many Iraqis have been slaughtered. The link above has only a few thousand, and may take a while to load.