The people of the world are embroiled in dozens of current and ongoing wars. Natural disasters have struck nearly every continent with dramatic destruction, including the recent devastation in Houston, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Tens of millions face starvation in famine or near-famine conditions in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria. We face the threat of both international and homegrown terror attacks. We are divided over protests, racism, and political gridlock. Trust in government is at an all-time low.
Our world seems to be anything but peaceful. In this stark reality, there is great need for peacemakers.
There are two ways to interpret the concept of “making peace.” The first is to avoid conflict; to acquiesce. As in, “I have made peace with the fact that we disagree.” Or “I have made peace with the way things are.” After this manner, peace is maintained by keeping quiet, by biting one’s tongue, by falling in line. By going gently into that good night.
This is not the kind of peace I want to make.
When I make peace, I want to build it. From the ground up if I have to. Like a first responder who runs toward the flames, or a solider who runs toward the good fight, I believe a peacemaker is the sort of person who runs toward conflict and builds peace with her words and her own two hands.
To be a peacemaker is to be a creator, a visionary, a champion.
Peacemaking is not for the faint of heart.
In a war of words and ideas, where political divisions have become chasms, a peacemaker must rappel into the darkness of the abyss and begin to scale the other side. A peacemaker must not only see the far rim of the canyon, but also find toeholds in its sheer face and, conquering understanding, begin the challenging and arduous task of building a bridge across the empty void.
Blessed are those who seek to understand the perspective of others, and who dialogue with civility and generosity.
In a war between people, a peacemaker must dig through the dirt and grime of history and culture to excavate our mutual stories — to reconstruct the lost traces of our shared roots like shards of precious, ancient pottery. A peacemaker reassembles the broken threads of our common humanity.
Blessed are those who see the humanity in the most different of others, and fight to preserve and protect the dignity and worth inherent in that humanness.
In a war between friends or family, peacemakers engineer new hearts — of sturdier and softer stuff than the old, broken ones — and, like surgeons, sew up those old wounds and graft in the new, bionic ability to love. The sight of a broken heart is not for the faint, and mending the arteries through which love flows requires patience and practice.
Blessed are those who forgive the people who have hurt them the most.
And in a war with an enemy who seeks to destroy all that we hold dear, the peacemaker chooses love instead of hatred. The peacemaker perseveres in maintaining a ceasefire in her own heart even as she defends her rights, her freedoms and her family. A peacemaker chooses hope over fear, welcoming the stranger even in the face of terror.
Blessed are those who open their homes and communities to the refugees of war-torn or corrupt nations.
A peacemaker fights the flame of prejudice not by letting it burn, but by quenching it with loving, understanding correction, by stamping out the embers of bias in her own soul and in the institutions in which she has a voice. And where she has no voice, she finds a way to speak.
Blessed are those who acknowledge the persistent and pervasive institutions of racism and work to reverse the injustice.
Where peace is absent due to disaster or famine or disease or injustice, the peacemaker shelters the homeless, clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, heals the sick and defends the victim. This requires time, money and effort.
Blessed are those who donate time and money to improve the lives of others.
A peacemaker does not merely find peace or feel peace or desire peace. A peacemaker makes peace. Creates it, if needed, from raw materials. As apprentices to the Master, we learn to fashion peace out of disorder. “For God," Paul writes to the Corinthians, "is not the author of confusion, but of peace.”
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
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