Give peace a chance

Following on from yesterday's post, Caroline asked: How do you see the transforming power of God at work in helping us all live in peace? 

When I was about 13 or 14 I was obsessed with the sixties, with pictures of The Beatles and John and Yoko all over my bedroom walls.  I painted a load of posters with slogans like 'Give Peace A Chance', 'Make Love Not War' and 'Ban the Bomb' and put them up above the picture rail.  One morning I got in a fight with my younger brother (he was 12, I was 14 - it happened a lot), and I shouted at him (this happened a lot too).  My dad, irritated by yet another argument and doubtless aggravated by the volume of my shrieking, angrily said to me: "Give Peace A Chance?  You don't know anything about peace!"  Being an emotional 14-year-old girl, I burst into tears and took down all my peace posters.  I was upset, not just because my dad had yelled at me, but because I knew he was right.  My idealistic vision of the world at peace was all very well, but it had to start with me.  Peace starts in the human heart. I realise now that it is not so much a beautiful vision which could be realised if only world governments would listen to me, but a difficult and lifelong process of putting others' wellbeing before my own; of removing the log in my eye before pointing out the splinter in someone else's.

I'm not saying that it's only Christians who understand peace or that Christians are always peaceful people.  But following Jesus has transformed my character as nothing else has, and continues to challenge my attitudes and my behaviour on a daily basis.  Furthermore, this is not because I have learned a set of good principles which I am striving to follow, but because I live in submission to someone who dwells within me, works through me, and gives me the power to follow his teaching.  I believe that our best chance of living in peace consists in following the one who asks us, not to live for him, but to allow him to live in us.

Ultimately, however, when I wrote of God's transforming power at work in the world, I was writing of a hope for the future rather than something I see happening right now.  I am frequently appalled at the terrible suffering taking place in our world and at the terrible evils which seem to go unchecked.  I feel impotent in the face of such human misery.  When I visited Rio de Janeiro in 2012 with a group of other ministers in training I found myself quite oppressed by the violence which seemed to be rife in that beautiful city.  Even our hosts who had lived in Rio for many years rarely went out alone, and were never alone after dark.  We visited poor communities situated on the hills which poke up out of the vast cityscape.  They had until recently lived under the shadow of the drug lords who were slowly being driven out by the military police - only to take their trade to other parts of Brazil, of course.  The gap between rich and poor was huge.  While I saw many examples of great community work going on - homeless people being fed and clothed; poor children being educated; communities experiencing regeneration - the scale of the challenge was enormous.  

Months later, I reread the Beatitudes ('Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven' and so on - they're in Matthew chapter 5) and I was struck by Jesus' insistence that God is with the poor, vulnerable and struggling in a profound and mysterious way.  Not that that removes the necessity for us to work to improve the lives of the poorest people in our world.  But it gave me the assurance that God had not forgotten about them; that he was there in ways perhaps unseen; that he cared deeply and that, despite outward appearances, he called them blessed.  And the promise is that those who are weak, vulnerable and struggling now will inherit the kingdom of God.  This is partly a promise for the end, when God comes to his people in all his glory and to bring in a new heaven and a new earth.  But it is a promise of blessing which starts now.