From the January issue of the Konnoak Door...

It began in March of 2003 with a cruise missile fired at Baghdad with a mission to decapitate the Iraqi government. It ended in December, with a metal gate closing behind the last American convoy to cross the Kuwaiti border. In the long years in between, I occasionally thought that when the War in Iraq ended, we would sing the following Moravian stanza in worship. It was written in Salem to mark the end of an earlier war:

Peace is with us! Peace is with us, People of the Lord!
Peace is with us! Peace is with us, Hera the joyful word!
Let is sound from shore to shore! Let is echo evermore!
Peace is with us!, Peace is with us, Peace the gift of God.

Peace is with us, but it is not a perfect peace. The peace in Iraq will be tested by future acts of terrorism, sectarian violence, and economic instability, while we continue to pray for those in harm's way in Afghanistan. The joy of one war's end is tempered by the reality that our nation continues to wage another.

No, we won't walk around Salem Square by torch light as our forebearers did to mark the end of the war in 1783. We'll reserve "Peace is with us. Peace is with us," for a later Sunday. Yet as we cross over into a new year, the end of a war indeed takes us a giant step closer to the day of peace and goodwill of which the angels sang, and we will greet the year singing a traditional hymn of thanksgiving with greater joy.

This hymn was written by Martin Rinkart, a 17th century Lutheran pastor who lived during the 30 Years War. His city became dreadfully overcrowded with refugees during the war. On three occasions the town was plundered by merciless armies taking innocent lives. The horrors of war were compounded when a bubonic plague swept over Germany. Rinkart was the only pastor in his city to survive. He buried as many as fifty people a day, the death also claiming the wife he loved. From this unimaginable context sprang the words with which we'll greet the New Year at our Watchnight Lovefeast:

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next.

Christ is born. Immanuel. Peace is with us.

John D. Rights