Headlines no longer surprise me.
This past week we watched in horror as a person used a rented truck as an instrument of devastation on the streets in New York. Just as that story began to fall out of the news cycle, our focus was again transfixed on a story of a lone gunman opening fire and wounding or killing an entire congregation in Texas. We wonder if sanity and peace have left our corporate consciousness.
It seems today that all the adults have left the room when talking about peace. There is no model of peace coming from public figures. Peace is elusive from legislators, pundits and commentator’s posts, blogs, tweets and comments. Creating chaos makes better headlines than forging peace.
Peace is that fleeting commodity that people long for, but its presence is far too fleeting. Peace is treated as a feeling or emotion. “I feel at peace today,” some will say, until something rattles that peace.
Peace is sometimes treated as an equation: “My weapons – your weapons + luck = peace”
Peace is sometimes seen simply as a lack of conflict- a truce that has been called by parties in disagreement.
Because our understanding of peace varies, we do not really know it when it occurs, or where to look.
So where do we look for peace?
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”
Peacemakers are called God’s children. That means that God’s children should be the peacemakers that people need and to whom they should look.
It means that to see lasting peace- peace that bridges race, gender, socio-economics, family structures, we should pursue to understand what it means to be God’s children, grow as His children, and then step into our culture to be enactors of God’s peace. It should be the people of God, followers of Christ, whose voices we hear in the media, whose hands we see at work in the community, and whose are lives are lived in such a way that people see and experience peace at work. Peace that will last. Peace will never come from a politician’s tirade, or banalities made, but only through God’s presence practiced and enacted by His people.
As we watch events unfold, it can appear that all the adults have left the room. It is time for the true peacemakers to step up, and step into the fray and lead.
The motto of Motel Six is, “We’ll leave the light on.”
Will I be a light of peace, a person of peace, a child of God?
Our culture is waiting for our answer.