Living with a knot in my stomach, as I have been for the last several weeks, because of the headlines in the news, a friend’s post this morning on Facebook reminded me of these words from Christian scripture attributed to Jesus.
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.”
I admit it. I needed the reminder.
The reminder that even in the midst of the rubble and the bomb blasts and the rocket attacks and the missile strikes; even with all the anger and the hatred and the demonizing and the stereotyping, peacemakers continue to work.
I don’t know who they are.
They don’t often make the news.
But I trust they are there.
Some of them working on their own refusing to give in to the terror and the anger.
Some working with others doing what they can to break down the stereotypes used to justify the violence or to care for those whose lives have been shattered or to see beyond the destruction and the rubble of today to something new. And, then doing what they can to point out what they have seen to you and me.
Whether Jewish or Muslim or Christian or none of these, they are, indeed, children of God.
As I pray for peace, I will also pray for them.
If peace is ever going to come to Israel
Or to Gaza
Or to the West Bank
Or to Syria
Or to Nigeria
Or to Afghanistan
Or to any other of the broken places in our world today,
Peace as something more than stand off or stalemate,
It will be because of these peacemakers.
These men and women and children
And the work they do today.
Blessed are they.
Each and every one of them.
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