Photo: Peter Goerzen, Bethel College campus pastor, leads in a litany of confession and lament at the close of a short service of candle-lighting and prayer for Ferguson, Mo., Nov. 25. Photo by Melanie Zuercher.

With students scattering for the Thanksgiving holiday and Advent on the horizon, members of the Bethel College community in North Newton, Kan., came together to invoke the light of Christ in a dark time.

The prayers of confession and lament Nov. 25 in Bethel’s Administration Building chapel were directed at the people of Ferguson, Mo., following a grand jury’s decision Nov. 24 not to indict Darren Wilson, a police officer who fatally shot teenager Michael Brown last August.

“We gather in the sanctuary of God’s healing love,” said Peter Goerzen, campus pastor, “still mourning Michael Brown and all God’s children whose lives have been cut short.”

Goerzen quoted the prophet Habakkuk: “How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails.”

Harking back to John 1, with which he opened the service, Goerzen said, “As Advent begins, we trust that the light still shines in the darkness.”

Those in the chapel came forward to light candles.

The short service concluded with a litany of prayers for mercy, forgiveness and deliverance, and a “pledge of allegiance” to “the one who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist … Jesus, the Lamb who was slain.”