ON SUNDAY Christians across the world united in prayer for the victims of the terrorist atrocities in Paris.
We prayed for those who were killed, and for the injured, their families and loved ones. We prayed for the hospitals and those treating and helping the wounded. We prayed for the security services, and those who try to protect us from such monstrous acts of cowardice, violence and cruelty, and who must now work to bring them to justice.
We also prayed for those who encourage and commit these crimes, that they would see the terrible wrong of what was done, and choose a different path to the one of the gun and the bomb.
Those who commit acts of murder and terror must be resisted, but the opposite of violence and intolerance is not equal violence and intolerance- it is peace and tolerance.
We, in Petersfield, and in so many other places, must choose how we respond to these events. A response of suspicion, prejudice and insularity would mean that we have been tainted with the mindset of hatred and suspicion that motivated the terrorists.
I hope and pray that Europe, England and Petersfield will show their best in the face of the worst terror can do.
Rev Canon Will Hughes
St Peter’s Church, Petersfield