Honestly, you tell me: there may be only a few dozen of the 195 countries in the whole wide world that had no reported battles, or riots of violence this year, but how many of our families, or friendships, or faith communities, had no hidden battles or a busted and broken peace?
Christ coming to make peace with us who didn’t deserve it, so how can we not pass the peace on He’s served each of us?.
How many of us honestly don’t have real peace with that someone down the pew, down the street, or right there in our family tree? I could look in the mirror and weep.
And yet — how many of us will sing “Peace on Earth, goodwill to men” and feel no durable peace toward more than a few difficult men?
You can feel it right there, in your tender-raw heart: Peace can’t be accomplished by people. It never has been, and never will be.
You can only concede:
Peace can only be made by the very Prince of Peace. There is no other way, but through the One who is The Way.
Lord help us all, because honestly, real peace for us all seems downright impossible without You.
So our Christmases and our crisis and our conflicts all ache with the longing cry: “Come Lord Jesus, Come.”
This is no melodramatic ploy, but our only honest plea.
How can we wage peace, if only the Prince of Peace can actually bring peace?
How do we still wage peace, while we wait still for the Prince of Peace?
This is what I try to tell myself when it all feels too hard and overwhelming:
Advent is about waiting, so advent is simply about doing what the waiters always do — the waiters always serve.
There is no other way to wait through Advent than to be a waiter — and serve.
The Advent waiters serve the oppressed their open hands, so we all get to become prisoners of hope.
The Advent waiters serve the hurting with extra helpings of real help, so we all fill with actual hope.
The Advent waiters serve soup to the love-starved, and invite the relationship-hungry to their hearths, and the Advent waiters serve the world food and warmth and shelter and welcome and cruciform love so we all feel the touch of the hands and heart and peace of Christ.
There is no other way to wait through Advent than to be a waiter — and serve. Serve the single mom next door with a night out and the widow down the street with a dinner in, and make it a point to serve all the singles a seat at your table because they long to be seen and served and sincerely celebrated as whole reflections of Christ!
Blessed are the peacemakers who serve peace to their enemies with just one prayer of reconciliation, just one ongoing prayer for the softening of hearts, just one brave card in the mail, which might just light a fragile flickering flame in the dark, and is this sign that the real kingdom and the Prince of Peace is breaking in right now.
Sometimes the real work of peace begins first with just one real honest prayer, for the Prince of Peace to come do what only He can do.
Sometimes peace doesn’t first mean reconciliation of two parties, but a prayerful exploration of what is even safely possible.
You get to seek two things at one time: protection and peace.
Sometimes peace looks like creating real boundaries, around what contact looks like, and what subjects of conversation are appropriate, and peace that’s small and tentative — is still very much a real and meangingful peace.
Sometimes the real work of peace begins first with just one real honest prayer, for the Prince of Peace to come do what only He can do. Blessed are the peacemakers who feel along for fractures in families, and faith communities, and cultural frontlines, and proactively forge peace with just even a commitment to keep praying with their Christ-burning hearts, because what if nothing dishonours God more than our disharmony?
What if we find ways to hold space for Jesus never calling us to a peace that leaves us unsafe and also holding space that in some ways disharmony brings a kind of hell on earth instead of real peace on earth, and who will be the first to wave a white flag to surrender to just praying and praying and praying for the supernatural mending ways of the Prince of Peace?
Blessed are the peacemakers who serve peace exactly to those who don’t deserve it, because this is exactly what Christmas is about:
Christ coming to make peace with us who didn’t deserve it, so how can we not pass the peace on He’s served each of us?
In the midst of how complicated, tender, painful situations — how can we wage peace exactly by waiting on the Prince of Prince, by doing what the waiters always do — serve light, serve hope, serve love?
How do we pray to wage peace by being real ministers of reconciliation, “for He himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” to let more of the light of the kingdom break in through our broken and wounded hearts.
How do we light more than peace candles this Advent — but how do we let our hearts ignite to become very torches of Peace, serving the dark with the reconciling light of Christ? Lord, help us, hear our prayer….
The very smallest of steps toward someone sets fire to the the dark, and tiny reaches toward reconciliation spark and lights hearts to signs that the Prince of Peace is coming.
What if a world of conflict made lists at Christmas, not just of people to buy for, but of just one person to serve real peace to?
The Advent waiters
who truly serve
are the true hasteners
of the kingdom and
peace of God.
And the whole wide world and our small worlds sing it, us being brave enough to go first and serve:
“Peace on earth!”
******
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here. With every step, we are walking into our forever now.
Come let Jesus touch our broken relationships & heal us & reconcile us with His PEACE.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
