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'The Lord Is Close to the Broken-Hearted': Manchester's Churches Reach Out

CBN

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Pastor Anthony Delaney describes a friends' deliverance from the bombing.

The people of Manchester are showing their love and support for the victims of Monday's terrorist attack.

At a prayer vigil in the town square Tuesday, thousands came to grieve, pray and mourn the lost. Despite the heightened terror alert, they came to leave flowers and light candles.

Manchester is known as a vibrant city with a strong church community, and Christians are reaching out to minister to their grieving community.

Pastor Anthony Delaney, leader of the Ivy Network of Churches in Manchester, says Christians will work to bring hope and healing to the suffering.  

"We're going to tell people that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, that there's love in heaven with everybody's name on it for every person in this city," Delaney told CBN News.

"In the Psalms it says the Lord is close to the broken-hearted and we're going to keep on in Jesus' name to be close, to be available to help, to do the Good Samaritan thing Jesus told us to, to go to those in need and to be able to help as best we can, and if we can't help, stay out of the way and pray," he said.

Delaney also says a family from his church was miraculously spared at the concert. They were supposed to be seated in the section where the bombing occurred, but something happened to change that.

"A last-minute mess up with the tickets put them away from the seats they should have been in right where the blast was, so they were saved," he says in his blog.

Meanwhile, the head of the Anglican Church in Britain, Archbishop Justin Welby, joined the bishop of Manchester to offer support, saying the deaths of children in the bombing are a painful reminder of his own loss.

"It's absolutely heartbreaking. I've been a parent who's had that news. It reduces you to something... just wounded and hurt, and you never forget it. And I am very much... That's on my mind today," he said.

Welby's daughter, Johanna, was killed in a car accident when she was less than a year old.

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