“What does peace mean to you in this season?”
I paused, unsure how to answer this question. Surely I feel the strife and tension in the world; those answers come quickly: wars cease, no more violence, mutual understanding, etc. But what would make everything right in myself? Some of the things I think will make it right are also the very things I am learning to give up.
The oft-quoted image of peace for the Advent season comes from Isaiah 11:
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
Wolves and sheep, predators and prey, opposites… together. While my imagination can put nations and political enemies next to each other (perhaps because they are “out there”), I have a harder time with those “in here.”
Maybe peace for me will look like sitting with those who have wronged me and not feel divided by our unresolved conflict. It could look like being in a room with them and others and not feel like I need to exercise unnecessary caution in what I say or how I act. But would that be enough? That would just be the absence of enmity, but it would not be the kind of peace I ultimately long for.
The passage above speaks of being “full of the knowledge of the LORD.” That would be the kind of peace I would want. Not this false peace where there is merely the appearance of peace. Not the ceasing of strife but the flourishing of love.