Eye on the World: prayers for Israelis and Palestinians

Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are mounting after the kidnappings and murders of three Israeli teens and a Palestinian teen last week. Israel launched airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, killing seven Hamas members and two civilians, which the Israeli military said was in response to rockets fired from the Palestinian territory, but which Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called a “grave escalation.” He added that Israel would “pay the price.” The Christian Science Monitor reports that there is “considerable concern that the tensions … could boil into a full-blown conflict.”

The situation is a call to prayer, and the following articles and ideas may help give you a starting point.

Praying for ‘perfect peace’ ” indicates that the key to this prayer is in keeping our minds stayed on God, in keeping “our minds so filled with the goodness of God that there is no room for anything else. In doing so, we recognize that there is no other power, no intelligence apart from God. No matter what human situation we perceive—whether we’re seeing strife on an interpersonal or international level—a mind filled with spiritual goodness is at peace.”

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