Calling for hope

The BBC News website reported Tuesday that the four peace activist hostages being held in Iraq would be killed in 48 hours unless the U.S. releases all prisoners in Iraq.

On Wednesday Yahoo! News online reported that the deadline has been extended until Saturday, but that still doesn't leave much time. This situation affects the EMU community directly; one of the hostages is CTP student Tom Fox. The remaining three are colleagues of his from England and Canada. At this point the outlook does not look good for the four men, because in response to the demands, the U.S. refused to agree to the release of Iraq prisoners. President Bush said when asked about the situation, "We of course don't pay ransom for any hostages, what we will do of course is use our intelligence gathering to see if we can't help locate them."

We could inquire as to the reliability of this "intelligence gathering," or ask if the government actually has some plan in mind to solve the problem, but that's not the issue here. What needs to be examined is how we respond to tense, time-sensitive situations like this that are difficult to resolve. As a country and as a campus community, our answer shouldn't be to just let the hostages die; that seems inhumane and feels as if we view peacekeepers as soldiers, who enlisted in the armed forces prepared to die for their country. Reverend Jesse Jackson (as quoted in the Yahoo! News article) said of the hostages, "Those four men are not soldiers. They're not spies. They do not have guns. They should not be used as trophies and killed in the process."

So we don't want to stand back and watch the men be killed; however, neither should our country's response be to give in to the demands of the other side. It's frustrating for us here at EMU to have one of our own in a hostage situation on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and to have to wait for the government to do something about it. It's hard to accept the fact that nothing may get done and that the hostages may die. We don't know that that will happen, of course, but the possibility is there. In the meantime, it is a waiting game to see what the next move is from either side.

Or is it? Though we may feel helpless, we are not. A Google search will turn up plenty of websites offering online petitions to sign for the release of the hostages. But that's not all. As Christians we have another, very powerful weapon that can sometimes go unused or forgotten: prayer. Two vigils have already been held at EMU for the hostages in Iraq, one last Wednesday on Thomas Plaza and one this Tuesday in Martin Chapel. They don't have to be the last before this situation finds resolution, nor does prayer need to take place in an organized setting such as the vigils. If every student here (undergraduate, graduate, IEP, seminary, and ADCP) took a little bit of time each day to pray for the hostages, over 1,500 prayers would go out daily. And that's just at our small school. People all over the world are praying for the hostages. There's got to be some power in that.