16 Oct 2010
The price of peace
Fighting for peace
Peace doesn’t accidentally happen, and it’s not what is normal.
Turmoil and conflict are what is normal.
It’s also normal for us all to do everything we can do avoid that turmoil and conflict.
Most of us live in a world of superficial peace, with a deep undercurrent of pain that comes from that turmoil and conflict that we can never really escape through our normal pattern of avoidance.
Thomas A. Kempis said:
“All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.
The Hebrew word for Peace, Shalom, doesn’t actually mean an absence of conflict, but a state of being in which every aspect of life has its right place.
I had a conversation yesterday that has had me thinking.
A friend told me how he had been reflecting about the difference between peace-makers and peace-keepers.
Jesus says in Matthew 5:9
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
One way to define the difference between a peace-maker and a peace-keeper, is that a peace-maker does the work to bring peace in the face of conflict whereas a peace-keeper works to avoid the conflict.
My friend pointed out a passage in Jeremiah 6:14
They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.
Relationships are not easy. It’s so much simpler to avoid the difficult conversations. Its far easier to pretend that everything is o.k..
Each and every one of us gets confronted with the choice to be a peace-maker or peace-keeper many times every day.
Real peace comes through honestly facing the truth of any situation, and working for Kingdom values in the face of conflict and turmoil rather than playing it safe.
Real peace has a cost.