darkness has fallen,i think this is some liturgy or scripture somewhere, but as is sat in a room filled with lit candles tonight with my youth, surrounded by pages of names of members of the cloud of witnesses, who passed the world with some involvement to the Iraq war and in Afghanistan. these are the words that came to me.
and the world has seen a great light,
darkness has fallen,
and the world will see a great light,
darkness has fallen,
and i will be a great light
darkenss has fallen,
and we will be a great light.
tonight at youth worship we held a prayer vigil marking the beginning of the third year of war in Iraq. as with any other vigil setting we had many many candles, somewhere in the 140 range, scripture, liturgy, a response, and silence. i started this prayer vigil seeing it as just praying for the soldiers and families who have suffered. however, as i looked over what "vigil" meant (in my handy dictionary for spiritual formation) it talked about a vigil as keeping watch while others had forgotten. this brought it much closer to our entrance into holy week as Christians. Jesus asked us to keep watch, and so, our prayer vigil we embraced the intercessory prayer for the soldiers, contractors, families, and Iraqi people. however, we had a moment of response in dreaming a new Christ like world. it was in this response time as the youth were writing and drawing on a 10 piece of packing paper that i felt those aformentioned words come forth. we all sat in silence (as silent as it can be with youth, which they were pretty good this night) and i closed out this moment of group vigil with those words. i hope that our youth group can embrace being a light amist the darkness, i hope i can do this as well.
:: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count ::
i haven't seen a site counting the casualties of the Iraqi people. although i did hear there is a shoe monument in washington dedicated to the soldiers and citizens of Iraq. i'll be looking for that later.
note: my brothers viewpoint from Iraq on this 2 year anniversary.
