Vigil at Crystal Cathedral : Prayers Raised for Hostages

Elaine Collett remembers that her mind and body seemed to freeze when she heard that her husband, Alec, had been taken hostage in Lebanon on March 25, 1985.

“I was stunned,” she said. “I was physically numb. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t function. My brain just locked down.”

But now that more than two years have passed, Collett said the “test of faith” has strengthened her.

Collett isn’t alone. She and three other hostages’ families joined religious leaders, former hostages and a smaller-than-expected crowd Thursday for an interdenominational prayer service at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

Prayer and Song

Church officials had expected 3,000 at the hourlong service, but only about 300 attended.

Through prayer and song, representatives of the Rev. Canon Episcopal Church of America, the Islamic Society of Orange County and Temple Beth David in Westminster asked God for faith, freedom for the hostages and world peace.

Seated with them at the foot of the pulpit were former hostages David Jacobsen and the Rev. Benjamin Weir; Jackie Steen, daughter of hostage Alann Steen; Joan Sutherland, daughter of hostage Tom Sutherland; Anthony Cicippio, brother of hostage Joseph Cicippio, and Collett, her son and David Collett, son of Alec Collett from a previous marriage.

Large black and white photographs of 22 hostages and flags of their home countries spanned the area in front of the pulpit.

Friends in the West, a nonprofit group of “prayerful individuals,” has begun gathering names for a petition to be sent to Sheik Mohamad Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon’s Shia spiritual leader. The petition, which already contains more than 25,000 names, asks Fadlallah to pray for the hostages in Lebanon, according to international prayer coordinator Lela Gilbert.

Faith, hope and perseverance were recurring themes during the service.

Eric Jacobsen, son of former hostage David Jacobsen, played the guitar and sang about hostages returning home. And the International Peace Choir, 37 children wearing the native dress of as many countries, sang “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”

After the hostages’ names were read, Dr. Robert Schuller, senior pastor of Crystal Cathedral, urged the hostages’ families to keep faith in God and “turn your scars into stars.”

“The word that I wish to speak is hope,” he said. “H-O-P-E. It could stand for these words: Holding On, Praying Expectantly.”

“A warning,” he added. “Please avoid what your human nature, all of you, will want you to cry out: ‘Why?’ Do not ask why, but rather ask what. ‘What can I do?’ ‘I can think, I can pray.’

“What happens to good people when bad things happen to them? The answer is they always become different and better. Trouble never leaves us where it finds us.”

After the service, Collett said the ordeal has caused her to “grow and mature as a woman.”

“My son and I have become closer. Something like this had to affect our lives deeply.”

Her husband, a British journalist, reportedly was hanged after England supported the United States in the bombing of Libya last year, she said, but her “gut feeling” is that he is alive.

“It’s a test of faith when you have no control over a situation,” she said. “You pray to God that you can just have faith. My faith has become stronger. “