Tuesday 5 August 2008

Today's selection by Thomas Merton will also frame what we will hear tomorrow.

To some people peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasure to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Is peace nothing more than the liberty to do as I please for the benefit of myself and my own? I don't think that is the peace or shalom or wholeness that is set forth within the Reign of God. Peace in God's Reign is not a freedom from it is a freedom for. It is is the freedom to share not a freedom to take from others. It is a freedom to replenish not a freedom to devour. It is freedom to face the realities of life around us without any form of cover up so as to see only what we want to see - it is not freedom to hide and keep to ourselves. In other words, peace demands that our eyes are open and we are honest about the condition of life around us. Peace is not self-center and self-consuming...it is always seeking the wellness of the whole. Therefore, peace will by its very nature resist the divisions that are created to keep us each in our own world where we can live as we want even as it destroys or damages the lives of others. Peace in God's Reign is always seeking to weave together the threads of life that can be so diverse we have a hard time putting them side by side. And yet, in such peace making comes the surprising adventure of God's shalom.

Connection: Peace is the life that is before us this day. We must be willing to wrestle with the best ways to make it alive among us.

Lord God, as you bring us into your peaceable Reign, it means that we must face our lives with truthfulness and an honesty that deliberately brings our eyes up to see the fullness of your Reign even as we would rather look only to our own good. Be with us in this journey. Amen.