Lord, be the Shepherd of my soul
There in the valley, along the narrow way
- Shepherd, Highlands Worship
Canada and India each expelled six diplomats Monday in tit-for-tat moves as part of an escalating dispute over the June 2023 assassination of a Sikh activist in Canada. A senior Canadian government official said that Canada was expelling six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner, after police uncovered evidence of ongoing violent criminal activity linked to the Indian government. Shortly afterward, the Indian foreign ministry said it was expelling six Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner and the deputy high commissioner. It said in a statement that the diplomats were told to leave India by the end of Saturday. The ministry had said earlier Monday that India was withdrawing its diplomats, after rejecting Canada’s diplomatic communication on Sunday that said the Indian ambassador was a “person of interest” in the assassination.
We pray for the calming on tempers and for the truth to be brought forth. We pray for cooperation between nations when appropriate, and peace always.
An Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in northern Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not clear what the target was. The strike hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito, which is part of the country’s Christian heartland in the north and far from the Hezbollah militant group’s main areas of influence in the south and east. Videos from Lebanese media showed a large plume of smoke rising from the hilly village, with several destroyed cars next to a severely damaged building, as people tried to remove bodies from beneath rubble and trees. The strike came a day after a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers — all of them 19 years old — and severely wounded seven others in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
One of the worst mass casualty strikes on Israel in a year of war came not from dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles nor the repeated barrages of rocket fire launched by Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, it was a single drone. The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel’s multilayered air-defense system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens. It’s the latest achievement for Hezbollah’s drone fleet and has shined a light on Israel’s struggle over the past year of war to knock down unmanned aircraft incoming from as far away as Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
Days turned to weeks turned to months. We’re now more than a year into this eruption of violence across the region with no end in sight. We pray for the funding for war to dry up, for bullets to no longer be manufactured, and peace-seeking people across the world to have their day.
Federal emergency response personnel directed employees operating Saturday in hard-hit Rutherford County, N.C., to stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region, according to an email sent to federal agencies helping with hurricane response in the state. On Monday, the Rutherford County sheriff’s office released a statement confirming that it had arrested an armed suspect for making threats against Federal Emergency Management Agency employees but had concluded that the suspect had acted alone and that there were not “truck loads of militia” targeting relief workers. Around 1 p.m. Saturday, an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene along with FEMA, sent an urgent message to numerous federal agencies warning that “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, N.C., to stand down and evacuate the county immediately. The message stated that National Guard troops ‘had come across ... trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.’”
God, this story is so deeply unsettling and worrying. We pray first for the safety of these workers and their families, and for the perpetrators to be handled by law enforcement. Our social media channels have become breeding grounds for conspiracy theorists and disinformation, which has led to these kinds of responses from the foolish among us. Lord, cease the hands and tongues of those who seek to use a moment of crisis to instill fear and wreak havoc.
Russia has recaptured a few villages in its western borderlands that Ukraine invaded over the summer, threatening Kyiv’s hold on territory it views as crucial leverage for pushing Moscow toward negotiations to end the war. In recent days, Russian troops have intensified efforts to dislodge Ukrainian forces from the bulge of territory they seized in Russia’s western Kursk region, launching several assaults spearheaded by armored vehicles. Battlefield maps compiled by independent groups using satellite images and combat footage indicate that Russian forces have driven a wedge into the western edge of the Ukrainian bulge, recapturing at least three villages. “In general, the situation in Kursk is not so good,” DeepState, a group with close ties to the Ukrainian Army that analyzes combat footage, said on Sunday. Ukrainian forces “are taking stabilization measures, but it is extremely difficult to reclaim what has been lost.”
Lord, God, what is the long-term plan here? What is the actual plan for this war to end? If its for Ukraine to recapture its land, there seems to be little effort to propel that effort. Lord, we pray for resolution and for young men and women fighting to go home.
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