Blessed, Active, Disruptive Peace-Making (Advent meditation)

Sarah Bessey is a Canadian author that I follow. She authored the great book ‘Jesus Feminist,’ a title I use for myself.

Here’s what she wrote today about the Advent theme of ‘Peace.’

I believe that peace-making is more in step with Jesus than peace-keeping. I believe in the voices crying in the wilderness, prophesying with their lives about the Kingdom of God. I believe we will see swords beaten into ploughshares but it won’t happen by magic – poof! ta-da! – but instead it will be because we realized that it’s up to us, and we are it, and then we get to the good work of following Jesus and embodying the peace we have found.

I believe that peace begins with forgiveness and conversation and reconciliation, oh, I believe in miracles, I’m so ridiculous. I believe that small acts of peace are still acts of peace.

I believe in creating peace, in disrupting for peace, in the truth that peace isn’t always polite and it certainly isn’t status quo and it isn’t always cozy with twinkle lights and it will make people uncomfortable because they’re so used to benefiting from the lack of it.

I believe peace is hard fought in the corners of our own hearts long before it’s demonstrated and enacted. I believe in a peaceful imagination that dares towards joy and hope and challenges the way it is and the way it’s always been and the way it will likely always be done. I believe that the Holy Spirit is more than enough within us. I believe that Jesus wasn’t stupid or naive or “just didn’t get what it means to be alive these days.”

I believe that Jesus transforms us, even our desires and our thoughts, into who we were meant to be all along. I believe that evil and sin and violence and brutality of all sorts are all cancers in us, killing us all. And that only Love cures such things, only love can pull out the tentacles of these cancers.

I believe Advent reminds me that peace was announced then and peace was promised and that peace is our birthright and our endgame and our wholeness at last. I believe in singing a song of peace, declaring that God is not dead nor does God sleep, in the midst of a thunderstorms.

Because peace is what God announced at the birth of God-self among us: peace! Peace on earth!

Unlearning mild toothless peace-keeping and embracing strong disruptive peace-making might be the work of my life. It certainly is part of the song of Advent.

https://www.facebook.com/sarah.styles.bessey/
http://sarahbessey.com/

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‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’
(the Bible verse written in Arabic calligraphy, by Kamil Dow, Finland, 2016.
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/blessed-are-the-peacemakers-kamil-dow.html

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