"For Christ Himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in His own body on the cross, He broke down the wall of hostility that separates us." (Ephesians 2:14 NLT)
I have been reading books about war and the government propaganda that accompanies it. I began a month or so ago with A Gentlemen in Moscow. 462 fascinating pages written about a Former Person; a Russian aristocrat sentenced to house arrest amidst the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The main character spends forty years serving and spying on the socialist system.
Then I moved on to The German Wife. While I have read dozens of books on the Houlocaust, I had never read about it from the perspective of a German citizen. The unlikely heroine in this book laments the moral deterioration of her homeland and fights to keep her family safe in a growing culture of blatant hate and distrust.
Most recently, I’m chewing my way through Cloud Cuckoo Land. It’s an epic spanning a thousand years. The cast of characters is tied together across time and space by an ancient Greek fable. The fable proves hopeful as they each face the very ugliest humanity has to offer: greed, war, enslavement, disease, disappearing resources, fear and destruction.
These three books are not connected in any way, yet their themes echo the same hopelessness and loss. The lack of peace is highlighted on every page. The characters are all bent on finding a better life. Specifically, in Cloud Cuckoo Land, each cast member dreams of a golden city in the clouds, guarded by birds. This fairytale city boasts of unlimited apples, plums and pears. It supposedly contains streams of sweet wine and piles of honey cakes. The faint promise of such a place pulls the folks forward, propels them through the mud and mire, the tears and loss, the injustice and devastation.
Reading these three books in such a short time has forced me to make conclusions:
*Humanity is hopelessly broken. Nations have been warring since Cain and Able. The fight over land and resources and rights will continue until we are made righteous. (And it’s all very exhausting.)
*Every human is in dire need of hope. People, though scattered across countries and centuries, all require a marker to move toward. When we lose our marker, we lose our will to live.
*Jesus is the missing piece. Peace is not a place or a political institution or even a set of values. Peace is a person. He is our hope amidst the worst humanity has to offer. He alone breaks down the wall of hostility that separates us from God and any hope of wholeness, but also from each other.
When we receive Jesus, in fullness, we also receive both the will and the means to make peace with others, to become people of peace. You could even say we begin moving toward that golden city in the sky.
Jesus, having befriended His Father’s enemies through His own shed blood, implores us: pray for your enemies. Love them. Even bless them. It is in Christ that we learn it; the highest aim for our enemies is that they would become friends of God. And by association, friends of us.
The world will not stop warring until they receive the Prince of Peace. He is the missing piece. We know this, we have received Him. In His wisdom and sovereignty, He has sent us as ambassadors, spokespeople already infused with the peace of His Kingdom.
"But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those that persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:44-45 NLT)
"Do all that you can to live at peace with everyone." (Romans 12:18 NLT)
Lord, we realize we are living in a broken-down Kingdom. The infection of sin has long set in and we are endlessly warring. Forgive us for our contributions to the battle. We receive You again as King and welcome You peace into our hearts. Restoration us and re-equip us. Help us to live as people of peace. Give us the grace to love our enemies as You have loved us. Remake us into accurate representation of Your Kingdom as we pray, love and bless those that persecute. Amen.