MY PEACE I GIVE TO YOU.
This is one of my favorite verses from the New Testament where Jesus speaks of peace--"My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives." Boy, is that ever true, esp. now in these rather dark times. (When do we stop using the modifier "rather" and just say, "dark times." I fear for that time. What does it even mean to have "peace" in one's heart now? I am going to hazard a guess. I think the only peace we can truly have now is that which comes from loving God, from putting God at the center of our lives and trying to follow the Gospel. N.T. Wright, my new favorite theologian, speaks of once this happens, we must take on the mission of the Gospels and the church. To welcome the immigrant; to care for the poor; to lift up the lowly; to feed the hungry; to comfort the mourning; in short, to follow the Beatitudes. (How is it that Evangelicals in the South always want to put the 10m commandments into schoolrooms but never the Beatitud...
