Day 12: PEACE
“…And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
Luke 2:14b
There are a great many words that once meant something and have since been hijacked, overruled, or stamped with some new veneer, marring their purity and beauty. Like a toddler with the lipstick, a once lovely face is smeared in such a way as to make a mockery rather than a delight, and in the effort to enhance have rather undermined the innate loveliness.
Peace is one such word. Left to its own cultural drift, ‘peace’ might sail us toward hippie protest signage or a bygone Beatles lyric. It encompasses some shell of itself which is now so shopworn as to leave us only a residue of a former glory, like the lingering dark ring at the bottom of my coffee mug. There was a fullness and richness there at one time, but no more.
Fullness and richness there is however! Our peace with God the Father, substantiated through Jesus Christ the Son is our shalom. He is our wellness. The wholeness of our body, mind, soul put right as it is realigned with the Father. Our righteousness inherited through the Son gives our spirit ease. It is the assimilation into our mind and heart, a weaving into the fabric of our being, that no mere death, nor any other curse or calamity can confound the security of our eternal souls.
This peace is so substantial and complete that like a pendulum unbound from gravity, it would turn a full orbit. It would bring a sword and create war rather than end it. This peace would set apart and divide men one from another: those who are at ease with the Father, and those who are not. For those without peace continue in their frenetic rebellion to the fracture of their own souls, waging a war within themselves, and oft spilling out into indignation toward the children of God. So bitter is the rift of un-peace, and so complete its deception that it would regard the goodwill of God a thing to revile.
So all the more might we look with Christ-like compassion, to extend and amplify the message bound up in Messiah, Peace! May my enemy’s soul be put to rest, for such is the peace from the Father toward me.
