Prayer for peace in Sri Lanka

On Saturday evening at St Johns Seven Kings we held a time of prayer for peace in Sri Lanka together with friends from the Tamil Church in East London. Our aim was to stand alongside our Tamil brothers and sisters locally in their anguish at the bloodshed occuring within their country.

As part of this time of prayer we viewed powerpoint slides and a dvd clip giving brief background details to the current crisis. Over the past 60 years:

• more than 100,000 Tamils killed and disappeared;
• more than 20,000 Tamil orphaned children;
• more than 35,000 Tamil widows;
• hundreds of thousands of schools, houses, hospitals, churches, temples, villages and livelihoods destroyed;
• more than 600,000 Tamils internal refugees; and
• nearly 1 million Tamils made to flee the country.

After the Election of President Rajapakse there has been an escalation of violence by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and Government sponsored Paramilitary. The Sri Lankan Government has de-merged the Tamil Homeland in the North-East of the country and unilaterally abrogated the Ceasefire Agreement from January 16, 2008. The Sri Lanka government is intensifying a full scale war on the Tamil Homeland to impose a military solution and calling it a “War on Terror.” There is no credible political solution under discussion by the Sri Lankan government.

Tamil civilians are being targeted through disappearances, daily aerial bombings, road-side bombs, shelling, and extra-judicial killing. Over 5,000 Tamils have been killed since the election and an average of 57 Tamils are being killed daily.

Yesterday, an informative article on the current situation - Traumatised Tamils live in fear of new crackdown in Sri Lanka - was published in The Observer.

In our service we prayed the following prayer:

The weight of grief bears heavily upon us
but it is a load we need not bear alone.
Let us offer our burden to Jesus,
Lord of life and of death,
of the present and of the future.

We bring before you, Lord,
our confusion in the face of shock,
our despair in the face of tragedy,
our helplessness in the face of death.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

We bring before you, Lord,
the tears of sorrow,
the cries for help,
the vulnerability of pain.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

We bring before you, Lord,
our sense of frustration,
our feeling of powerlessness,
our fears for the future.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

We bring before you, Lord,
our frustrated hopes,
our unfulfilled desires,
our unfettered sadness.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

God of the desolate and despairing, your Son Jesus Christ
was forced to carry the instrument of his own death -
the cross that became for us the source of life and healing.
Transform us in our suffering
that in the pain we bear you might be for us
a fount of life and a spring of hope;
through him who died for us,
yet is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
now and for ever.
Amen.

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Marvin Gaye - What's Going On / What's Happening Brother.