I have been humbled by the thousands of people - of faith and of no faith - who have supported me over the past seven days with their presence, prayers and solidarity. With all these people I want to raise my voice and declare like the Psalmist that human life is too valuable and fragile. Each of those who have been killed were 'fearfully and wonderfully made'. Why then is their life cheapened by those who control suicide bombers, Katusha rockets, airstikes and gunships.
At the end of one of our hourly prayer sessions a five year old lad visibly upset, came up to me with his mother and said "Thank you for what you are doing. I am very upset with all the killings. Why didn't they get it sorted by talking?"
A teenager asked, "Why didn't God stop it? Where was He when people were killing each other?"
"He was being violated" I replied to her "God was being violated. Do you remember Elijah and the wind, the earthquake and fire?"
"Yes" she said. "God was not in them, but in a gentle, still voice."
God's voice is to be heard in the voice of an eight year old Lebanese girl, injured and orphaned who had lost her eye in an airstrike and in the voice of an eighty-five year old Israeli woman, sick, poor and unable to move out of reach of the Katusha rockets.
Where is God? Surely he is being violated with those who are damaged by the consequences of violence and being diminished with those who enact it.The road to peace is not an easy one, but we need to stick at it. The dividends of peace are incalculably greater than the wages of conflict which have been paid in the Middle East in the countless widows, orphans and displaced peoples produced by conflict.
The continuing tragedy makes demands of us all and underlines the need to find peacemakers and mediators from the international community who will work for conflict resolution.
With the Archbishop of Canterbury I believe that one of the middle-to-long term issues for any UN intervention will be, what kind of peace is expected to emerge now that a cease fire has been negotiated - who takes responsibility for anything that looks like a "common
security" solution preserving the integrity and legitimacy of civil society and government in Lebanon and giving no possible handle to the rhetoric of groups that challenge Israel's right to exist.
