Editorial June 24, 1996 Issue

Your prayer closet—and the human family

Barbara M. Vining

"If there was a God, it was as if he created the situation in which we lived."^{See Time magazine, April 1, 1996, pp. 42–44 .} These are the grateful words of Kruno Oprhal, father of a Muslim family living in Grbavica, a sector of Sarajevo. For forty-three months, beginning in April of 1992, Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was under Serbian siege. During that time, Grbavica was "ethnically cleansed" of its large Muslim population and then used as a base for snipers and mortar attacks on the government-held center. Yet, throughout those terrible months, Kruno and his Muslim family were able to continue living in their apartment in Grbavica. The "situation" in which they lived was this: Serb friends, Serb neighbors, and even sympathetic Serb soldiers found within themselves the kindness and courage to take risks to conceal the Oprhals' identity, and to shelter them from harm. Now, after the war, while Muslims are returning to Grbavica and the majority of Serbs have fled, the Oprhals are, in turn, providing protection for one of their staunchest Serb protectors, a neighbor who has no place to go.

Stories like this renew our hope that mankind need not continue along a path of senseless, self-destructive inhumanity. There is a God. He creates the goodness in man that impels people to care for one another—the goodness that made it possible for Kruno and his family to survive in such desperate circumstances. The God-given goodness expressed by those Serbs who came to the Oprhals' aid is inseparable from Him and resides within the consciousness of every individual on earth. Even though at times this true goodness certainly seems hidden, it is discerned and brought into the open through prayer.

When I read about Kruno and his family, I thought of the prayers of people all over the world who had been cherishing and upholding man's inherent goodness throughout the horrible war in Bosnia. I was also keenly aware of the immense tragedy of that conflict, and of so many other conflicts in the world—the many thousands of people who have not been protected as the Oprhals were. I realized that the vast potential of prayer has gone as yet largely untapped. And I asked, as many others have, What more can I, one individual, do?

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