September 19, 2008
by Melissa Ramirez Cooper

Members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will pray for peace Sept. 21, 2008, as part of the International Day of Prayer for Peace. The day is an opportunity for churches worldwide "to pray and act together to nurture lasting peace in the hearts of people, their families, communities and societies," according to the World Council of Churches (WCC) based in Geneva. The ELCA Task Force for a Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence encourages Lutherans to participate and offers worship resources in addition to prayer and liturgical resources of the WCC. The ELCA is a member of the WCC.

"When we pray for peace it may seem at first to be a futile pious wish in the face of the bewildering, frightening and sometimes overwhelming reality of violence and hostility in the world. What good, after all, could it possibly do to pray for peace? Or, it seems that we must pray for peace because we feel powerless to do anything about the conflicts in our lives, our communities and the world around us. What else, therefore, can we do but pray? We can pray in the confidence that God is actually in the midst of war and community conflict – not standing far off above it – and so is well-placed to bring peace," said the Rev. Ronald W. Duty, assistant director for studies, ELCA Church in Society. "What we usually don't realize is that often, when God brings the blessing of peace, God gives that blessing through us. So when we pray for peace, we are actually praying, often unknowingly, that God will prepare and send us to be God's ambassadors of peace and to be God's peacemakers in our settings, just as Jesus called 12 ill-prepared but gifted disciples and prepared and sent them to spread the gospel to the world."

The idea for the day of prayer was proposed in a 2004 meeting between the Rev. Samuel Kobia, WCC general secretary, and Kofi A. Annan, former United Nations secretary-general. The day is an initiative of the WCC's Decade to Overcome Violence and coincides with the UN's International Day of Peace.

ELCA News Service