Christ comes bringing ... peace!
While searching for, and listening to, various songs to find one for "Peace", I kept coming across I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Honestly, I don't know that I had ever stopped to actually consider the lyrics (or the back-story). Go ahead - click that link. I'll hang out here. I'll be ready for you when you come back.
Did you read it? Really? Seriously, go click the link - it's ok. This blog will still be here in a couple of minutes.
So now that we're all on the same page: what a poignant story and picture of peace in our world. War - both for Longfellow and for us today - is an all-too-painful reality. We have friends, family members, neighbors, acquaintances who are there, or are back, or are preparing, or...
So how, in light of all this hurt and anger and destruction, do we honestly spend any time at all considering peace? And what do we mean by peace? I know most of us think of something like "absence of war and strife" but what does it really mean? And what does scripture have to say about peace - and about the Prince of Peace? For that matter, why do we call Christ the Prince of Peace anyway?
A more full-fleshed idea of peace includes not just the absence of war, but the presence of health, fullness, completeness. Not just the moment the treaty is signed and both sides agree to stop fighting - but the moments and hours and days and years and lifetimes of living and growing and healing. And Christ - the Messiah - comes to be the Prince of that completeness.
Christ himself says that he has not come to bring peace - not in the way we traditionally think of it. Rather:
- He is the source of our life, growth, health - our completeness. He restores our relationship with God - creating peace for us personally.
- He brings peace in our relationships with each other - as we strive to show Christ to the world we cannot help but be a light of life for others - bringing peace to them, and between us.
- And a greater Peace is promised. A day when the wolf and the lamb will lie down together. The angels proclaimed that peace - that completeness, that restoration - on the first Christmas.
It would be so easy to sing the penultimate verse of Longfellow's poem - and skip out on the last. How often do we find ourselves overwhelmed with the hatred and mockery on this earth - and giving in to the despair that there will never be peace? Instead, we need to make sure we finish the thought! Sing that last verse! Peace is not gone. Peace is here - it is ours. Let the bells of the season ring out loud and strong over the despair, reminding you:
"God is not dead, nor does He sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
with peace on earth, good will to men"
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
with peace on earth, good will to men"
**Full Lyrics for this Casting Crowns version**
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet their songs repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men
And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men
Then rang the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor does He sleep
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men
Today's Readings
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