Mournful news coming out of Iraq these days. The last troops of President Bush's "surge" are in place -- but across the country, violence has actually increased over where it was a few months ago.

This past Sunday, during the prayers, one of our folks offered prayer for those in Iraq who are crying out for freedom and justice. I have thought about that a lot during the days since, because the ordinary Iraqis are indeed the ones forgotten in the whole Iraq mess. Much attention is paid to our soldiers (of course!) and to Al- Qaeda fighters and to Iraqi militias fighting each other and to the politicians who are fighting among themselves. But not much notice is given to those in the general Iraqi popluation who are killed each day by Shia or Sunni with guns, who are intent upon killing those in the other sect of Islam.

Why do we not give attention to this daily loss of innocent life? Part of it is our narrow perspective, what it is that gets our attention. Here's an example. I think of the 33 killed in April at Virginia Tech. A terrible, terrible tragedy. It provoked national TV coverage that was nearly 24 hours a day for days, a presidential visit to the Tech campus, a Governor's blue ribbon commission to investigate the causes of the killings, frequent news articles in Virginia papers even now. It was indeed a terrible, terrible tragedy.

However, (and here's what I mean about perspective), in Iraq, if there is a day when only 33 non-combatant civilians are killed, that's a good day! How tragic. Does God mourn the deaths of hundreds and thousands of Iraqis less than the deaths that get our attention?

As we pray for an end to the killing of Iraqi civilians by the warring factions in that country, we join our prayers with God's prayers for peace.