By David ReayThursday 25 Aug 2022LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God. (NLT)
Peace is elusive. It is more than just an interval between wars, more than some signed treaty, more than lying on the sand of some tropical beach. It has different dimensions. There is peace with God, peace with others, peace within oneself.
A peacemaker is one who is willing and able to share the good news about how to have peace with God through what Jesus has done for us. A peacemaker is one who works hard to cultivate harmonious relationships between people. Such peacemakers are not blind to human failings. Peacemakers do not sweep things under the carpet. They recognise their own fallibility and also the fallibility of others.
They believe not so much in the essential goodness of human beings, but in the power of God to transform human beings who find it hard to live with other human beings. We have been likened to porcupines who huddle together for warmth and so end up hurting one another. So, peace between human beings is a challenge because it must go beyond mere niceness and urgings to get along with one another.
Peacemakers need to be at peace with themselves, accepting their own fallibility, working on healing their own wounds. So often our conflicts with others arise out of our own unhealed wounds. The turbulence we might be creating towards others may reflect our own inner turbulence. Being at war with myself makes it hard for me to work for peace with others.
Ultimately, peace between people is an offshoot of peace with God. Once I know God accepts me because of what Jesus has done, I am set free to be a peacemaker. I show myself to be a child of my heavenly father who wants peace and who knows what it costs to attain it.
Blessings,
David