UPFRONT February 27, 2006 Issue

Praises to God

SUZANNE SMEDLEY, STAFF EDITOR

What can we do, as individual citizens and nations, to stand up to terror and speed its certain demise? This has been a subject close to those of us on the Sentinel staff for some time—no more so than in recent weeks after we learned that Jill Carroll, a freelance journalist for our sister publication, The Christian Science Monitor, had been taken hostage in Iraq.

As we well know, terrorism is nothing new. Accounts of warfare, ambushes, and surprise attacks go back as far as the Bible's Old Testament, as Richard Nenneman points out in this week's issue of the Sentinel. Yet, the Bible has countless examples of how prayer, or singing "praises unto God" (see Acts 16:25) as Paul and Silas did, is an effective weapon against terror. They were released from prison in a seemingly miraculous way. Although we don't know what form in words their praises took, their absolute trust in God's supreme power and freeing love is clear.

The very angels so close to Paul and Silas—"the angels of His presence" (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 174)—are also here today on earth to disarm evil intentions, to hearten and strengthen us in darkness, and to release the innocent from prisons of fear and hatred.

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