Grant Us Peace

Grant Us Peace

September 9, 2018

There is no way to peace. Paulo Coelho tells a story of a Protestant pastor, having started a family, no longer had any peace for his prayers. One night, when he knelt down, he was disturbed by the children in the living room.

Have the children keep quiet! he shouted.

His startled wife obeyed. Thereafter, whenever the pastor came home, they all maintained silence during prayers. But he realized that God was no longer listening.

One night, during his prayers, he asked the Lord: What is going on? I have the necessary peace, and I cannot pray!

An angel replied: God hears words, but no longer hears the laughter. God notices the devotion, but can no longer see the joy.

The pastor stood and shouted once again to his wife: Have the children play! They are part of prayer! And his words were heard by God once again.[1]

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. Peace with who you are. Peace with where you find yourself. Peace with your neighbor. There is no way to peace, peace is the way.

It has taken me a long time to become who I am. And I am still becoming myself. It’s never really finished, this process of becoming. I have struggled with self-esteem issues. Part of me wants to be invisible. Part of me wants to be the hero. It has taken me a long time to get to where I am. To trust that I am loved. To trust that I am capable. To trust other’s positive opinions.

Once, in high school, I learned a classmate had a crush on me. My response wasn’t to gush or to be kind to that young woman. My response was to judge her for her poor taste in people.

It takes a long time to become who you are. It takes a lot of courage to be yourself and to live in your own skin. I don’t know if you struggle with mental health or poor self-image. I don’t know if something has happened to you that has scarred you and sent you reeling, wondering about your worth. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. Accept yourself. Accept that this is what has happened and that Hemingway was right, that the world breaks all of us. But some of us are stronger at the broken places.[2] To be at peace and at home in your own skin is a hard-won victory. We are often our worst critic. Set those negative thoughts aside. Just watch them sail on by. Do better when you can, be at peace and know that an average or even sub-par response is better than none at all.

Be at peace with where you find yourself. The world is an interesting place to live. It has always been that way. Many are losing their minds right now at the state of the world. There are protests. There are mean tweets. There’s corruption. The world has gone mad! Yes, it has. But it has never been sane. The world was mad with the Inquisition and worrying about the Huns or the Plague. The world was mad during two world wars. The world was mad when two planes hit the towers, one hit the Pentagon, and another crashed in that field in Pennsylvania. This is where we find ourselves. With our aching and aging bodies. With our friends and family and pets dying. With the bitter-sweetness of life. There is no way to peace, peace is the way.

Peace that before we change the whole world, we must change ourselves. As Gandhi said, “be the change you wish to be in the world.” If you want more peace, then be at peace. Less time ranting on social media or talking behind someone’s back. More words of loving kindness. More prayers. More space without watching the news all day, because what can you do to change it? You can vote, you can volunteer, you can mentor, you can be at peace with yourself and with what problems are in front of you personally, locally, and nationally. Find that deep need, and get to work and off the couch of apathy.

Be at peace with your neighbor. Show no partiality or favoritism. Although the disciple James seems to. He says “Is it not the rich who oppress you? Who drag you into court?” Better to be rich in spirit. My wife Kate found a great saying we often quote. “You can’t change someone else, only how you react to them.”

Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. With the Syrophonecian woman, Jesus shows favoritism, but then moves to be more open. And from this point forward until he goes to Jerusalem, Jesus is where no good Jew would go. He spends the rest of his ministry in Mark in the lands of the Gentiles and Samaritans. He actively engages them. He’s secure in his own worth and identity. He’s at peace with his context. And he had it way worse than we did. Jesus had no air conditioning. He could drive no cars. He lived in a land occupied by a hostile foreign power. He knew what the religious powers were plotting to do to him, how they countered him at every turn. Yet he was at peace.

Yet let’s not sentimentalize peace. It’s not some kumbaya floating above the world, free and completely objective. Peace is hard. It’s the hardest thing to do in an eye-for-an-eye world where reacting and being mean is considered strong. That’s not strong. Violence is the weak way, you can load that into a gun and shoot it into someone. You can’t do that with peace. Peace comes much harder and rarer than violence. Peace is often found through gritted teeth, or in being forgiven. Peace is not the absence of conflict, but how we are in conflict. Like Jesus today, calls a woman a dog, is in conflict with her and her need. But her peace turn of phrase changes Jesus’ mind. Once again, the body of Christ can learn and change. Peace is infectious like that.

Peace is already in your hands. You know where peace is in your life. You know that it’s already in your midst. Sometimes it might involve doing less, clearing out all the stuff in your house, to find that you’ve always had room to spare. It involves devotion and also joy, for laughter is its own prayer.

My hope for you is that you find peace. Peace with who you are. Peace with where you find yourself. Peace with your neighbor. There is no way to peace, peace is the way. My hope for us all is to be more like the Prince of Peace. May we pray, “Grant us peace. Amen.”

Works Cited

[1] http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2017/03/01/god-and-real-life/

[2] Ernest Hemmingway, A Farewell to Arms.

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