EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2021 I began a new venture writing a newspaper column titled "Finding Faith" for the Forum Communications Co. network of newspapers and websites. I was asked to contribute to the company's ongoing conversation about faith, lending a Lutheran and fairly ecumenical approach to the discussion. The column was published in several of the company's papers and websites, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. This column originally appeared as a "Finding Faith" column on Dec. 16, 2022.
By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks
This Fourth Sunday of Advent, we turn our focus to peace, the divinely-inspired peace offered through the “Prince of Peace,” also known as Jesus, who came from heaven in the form of a helpless human baby.
On earth, we tend to celebrate kingdoms that display might and power, but this Sunday we celebrate a savior who is part human, making him mortal and anything but what the world imagines a divine ruler to be.
Jesus didn’t come brandishing a sword and shield, bent on conquering human kingdoms into submission. Rather, he came as a boy, who grew into a man, who became a rabbi, and led people with the same peace offered by God, the Creator.
This Sunday gives us the opportunity to meditate on this special kind of peace that Jesus offers us, a peace borne of mercy and love, rather than a peace enforced through the threat of violence and domination.
So much strife in this world is caused by fear, which just may be how evil manifests itself. In our helplessness, we fear so many things. We fear others; we fear the scarcity of life’s essentials, air, food, water and shelter; we fear loneliness. And it is this fear that ultimately steals our joy and drives us into competition with others. Jesus’ peace, on the other hand, allows us to see our neighbors as another beloved child of God.
The trick is to have faith in the divine peace offered to us by the Creator, so that we can set fear aside, and live out of the abundance offered to us. The abundance of safety; the abundance of life’s essentials; the abundance of community for the entire human family.
If you find it difficult to pray for peace for this troubled world because all you see are the numerous wars and the seemingly unending divisions in our own nation, then I encourage you to just pray for God’s peace in your own heart. That is enough.
Because if we each attain peace within ourselves, we can trust that the Creator will infinitely multiply that peace throughout the cosmos. Wishing for peace on earth is a tall task, but with God’s assistance, asking for peace in our own heart seems well within our grasp!
Of course, Christians do not have a monopoly on peace. This celebration of the Fourth Sunday of Advent is open to all who place a high value on peace! So, as a supporter of peace of any stripe, there couldn’t be a better time to celebrate the divine presence threaded through all of the world’s peoples! Amen.
Devlyn Brooks is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and serves Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He also works for Forum Communications Co. He can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com for comments and story ideas.
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