On day of faith, closer to peace
Gloucester Times
Sunday, April 20, 2003
The escalation in violence brought by the war with Iraq to a region that has seen too little peace can seem to be at odds with our notions of Easter, Holy Week and spring.
Yet, the story of Easter is really about the hope that comes from renewal, and the faith that it can take place. The story of Passover is really about the freedom of a people who had been enslaved.
The toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime can be viewed in those terms as well. The Iraqi people are free from their fears of brutality and torture and death. There is the hope of non-dictatorial self-governance as a fresh start. The soon-to-occur rebuilding of Iraq from rubble has its obvious parallels to what so many of our prayers this weekend will signify or celebrate.
For at least this instant in time, the part of the world where Jesus walked and where the Jews escaped oppressive rulers is more at peace than it has been in recent memory.
Perhaps it is too much to ask that peoples of different religions and allegiances who have been fighting for centuries will suddenly lay down their arms and let down their distrust of one another. This weekend is good time to hope, pray, or ask that this will happen.
It probably will not happen, not for a while. But for whatever cultural disruptions that the world may see the United States and its coalition forces as causing, for whatever heartache and misery that has been inflicted upon innocent people as a result of battle, the fact is, there is now a glimmer of hope that another country will join Israel in Middle East democracy, and that this fervor will spread to the other nations in the region now governed by equally fanatic mullahs or dictators.
For, whether you have been for this war or against it, the rapid vaporization of Saddam’s powers was a powerful message to rulers of any country with designs on annexing its neighbors, collecting nuclear weapons or threatening the U.S. or other countries in the West: Do not mess with us, because we can find you and make you as irrelevant as we did Iraq’s ruling family.
No doubt that suicide bombers will continue to create havoc, in Israel and elsewhere. No doubt that the continuing occupation of West Bank territory will continue to spark hostility among Palestinians, and others in the Arab “street.” No one can stop keeping their eyes out for terrorists.
Yet, the feeling that lasting peace is more attainable than it was a just a month ago as a result of the activity in Iraq is realistic and comforting.
Back at home, Americans are safer, if only marginally so, from terrorism. Countries that harbor terrorists, or support them financially, now know there can be consequences.
From this period in which blood has been shed, one can see on the horizon a world more free of threats; a world more poised to live peacefully.
It is something for which to look forward, to include in our prayers and dreams, as we think this weekend about renewal, religious freedom and the rebirth that greets every spring.
