I have grown up seeing images of war on the television. Conflict after conflict has hit the news headlines and my screen and then appeared to become less significant. It has seemingly been too easy to become desensitised to world conflict.
For Remembrance Sunday last year, I wanted to lead something that helped our congregation engage with the reality of war and conflict in our world in a creative way.
I used war bowls made out of plastic toy soldiers and here’s one way to use them...
Place the war bowls around the room you gather in and give each worshipper a piece of paper and a pen. Ask them to think of one or more situations of conflict that they would like God to bring his peace to.
Ask the worshippers to take their prayer to one of the bowls and place it into the bowl as a symbol of God’s peace in the situation (to reinforce the symbol of peace we printed an image of a dove on to the pieces of paper. Picasso did some handy line drawings for this).
As your community comes back together, you could continue this intercession by singing O Lord Hear My Prayer from Taize, or Andy Flannagan’s, Bring Heaven to Earth (We Are Blessed) or another suitable song.
(Remembrance Day is on the 11th of November, so you have plenty of time to make your bowls!).
Damian works at Riverside Church in Birmingham as Worship Minister, and spends the rest of the time ministering to little people through BIG Ministries. He's a graduate of London School of Theology and newly engaged to the beautiful Katie.
