Jesus, our Peace

When did we start thinking peace was something we could legislate?

Politically, it’s preached from podiums, in pamphlets, at presidential debates. Peace – simultaneously elusive and easy to achieve. We just need the right policy, the right plan, the right perspective. 

Always, when the world speaks of peace, it’s centered around us – what we can achieve, what we’re doing, what we need to maintain the façade of self-worth and control and positive relations.

Personally, it’s the billed as the signature of self-care, sung by the champions of self-actualization. We just need to take time, be intentional, create boundaries. 

Create boundaries? Ironic, because every instance of peace-less-ness in the world all finds its origin in a single boundary. It’s the one we created when we thought we could do a better job ourselves, when we started thinking we could have anything good without God. We haven’t just failed to find peace –we’ve pushed Peace away.

It’s easy to concede philosophically, to intellectually assent to the history of human rebellion – but it’s harder to admit the ways we do it every day. Honestly? I’ve pushed Peace away this week every time I’ve chosen worry over trust. I’ve pushed Peace away every time I thought more about what I deserved from an interaction than how I could serve the other person. I’ve pushed Peace away every time I’ve let the stuff of earth send me into a panic rather than drive me to my knees in prayer. We choose earthly clutter and instant gratification and mindless minute-fillers over communion with the very antidote we’re after: Peace – the Person. Not the politically correct kind, not the cross-stitched pillow kind, not the massage therapy kind. 

Peace – the Person – that shows us our pride and our need far eclipsing any semblance of heroism – that proves that self-care boundaries are obsolete in His boundless, perfect love – that can make reconciliation possible because He spills His blood, the spill that makes us clean. 

John Lennon famously urged the world to “give peace a chance” – but really, it’s Peace that gives us a chance. We went wrong when we decided we could have anything good without God. So often we push peace away — if not on principle, then certainly in practice. Could it be that God, in his unmerited kindness, responds to our pushing by pursuit — by coming closer to us?

Yes. Jesus, Son of Man, come to reconcile, come to be with us.

Peace can’t start with us – it can’t be about us – and yet, God, in His lavish mercy makes it for us? 

Yes. Jesus, the heaven-sent, only Prince of Peace, given for us.