A Prayer for Saturday, August 9, 2014

The Victims of ISIL

O God,

Please help those people who are being persecuted and slaughtered by ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant) fighters in Iraq.

Please help the Chaldean Catholic Christians, the Shi’ite Muslims, the Kurdish Zoroastrian Yazidis, the eclectic Shabaks, and the Shi’ite Turkmen, all of whom are being targeted by ISIL.

Please help the leaders of our nation, of other nations, of the United Nations, and of the Arab League to take the right steps to help protect all of these persecuted Iraqi minorities.

Please show us how to do what we can do to help.

We would very much like to be able to thank you that we are not sinners like the people of ISIL; we would like to thank you that we are not so convinced of our narrow view of the world, of you, of ourselves, and of religion that we regard those who disagree with us, whose religion is different than ours, or whose ethnicity differs from ours as the enemy.

Instead, as we refuse to look up to heaven, we beat our breasts and pray, “God, be merciful to us, for we are sinners, too.”

Amen.

Source