2,000 Dead

This morning, the first of many emails arrived in my inbox. It was the first of several of my activist emails that I am too quick to delete these days. It was the first to announce that the death toll of American troops had reached 2,000. While rain storms the city, 2,000 American women, men and children are dead today. Dead in a war that some of us never wanted. Dead in a war that I don't know how to deal with. Dead, like Rosa Parks. May they all rest in God's peace.

Does this mean it's the end of an era? Is the civil rights movement really over with the death of this courageous woman? Do 2,000 more need to die in the name of terrorism and freedom for us to realize the injustice? Is this really only the beginning of the end?

Tonight, I gathered with four of my fellow students and sang about hope. Perhaps out of season. Perhaps just a little too early. We lifted our voices to the God among us singing "Come O Come Emmanuel". The last verse of this hymn (rewritten by Henry Sloane Coffin) speaks the words on my heart:

O come, Desire of nations, bind
All peoples in one heart and mind
Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease
Fill all the world with heaven's peace

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.