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Today’s Prayer Stone is PEACE… Oh how I’m praying for peace lately, every day, not just when I pull it out of my prayer stone bag. But today the peace stone showed up and so I spent a little extra time with it.
I love that this particular stone looks like the earth (don’t mind the little old lady gardening hands). How apropos! LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH! We see that sweet phrase plastered all over sparkly cards every Christmas. We sing songs about it around campfires. We print it on tie dyed tee shirts and black light posters. But what does it mean? Should we pray for this? Can peace on earth really happen?
My first answer is YES. I absolutely think we should pray for peace on earth. We have to pray for it. Please keep praying for it.
My second answer is no… I don’t think it could ever really happen though, not the whole earth anyway, not during this time period when we fallen prideful imperfect human beings roam this planet.
Regardless of how much incredible good we humans are capable of (and that is a LOT of incredible good) we will always still also be capable of immense evil. Corruption and malevolence will always be included in the human identity while we are enduring this physical time period. To think otherwise is just folly, bricks in the Tower of Babel. No matter how hard we try to be good, somebody somewhere is gonna come muck it all up. We are just too broken, too selfish, too prideful, too prone to jealousy and power trips. We just can’t get there from here.
Only the omniscient Creator of the Universe is able to rule with absolute justice and wisdom. We are wise to step aside and let him do that (as if we had any choice in the matter). But God probably isn’t going to just point his divine finger at the earth, shout “Shazam!” and voila blast peace all over the earth for us. That would be awesome if he did. And he could if he wanted to. But he doesn’t usually work that way.
He’s given us this thing called choice, and that comes with great responsibilty. We have a responsibility to choose the right way, the way of love, the peaceful way. So this is something that we can do… if we can forget about ourselves every once in a while, delve into God through prayer and meditation, seek after good things like love, patience, kindness, gentleness and self control… we can become little shelters of peace in our own small worlds.
So yes, let’s pray for peace on earth! Here, now, PLEASE! Then let’s start by creating and being the needed peace around us, in our little circles of friends, familiy, and coworkers. Let’s remember that everyone is fighting battles we could not even begin to imagine. Let’s shut our mouths and hold our tongues when we want to lash out in anger and frustration (yes that means on social media), breathe deep and count to ten. Let’s exercise forgiveness, bear with one another in love and humility. Let’s be peacemakers.
This one little thing we can do, with God’s help, day by day, minute by minute. Then we shall be blessed. Then we shall be called children of God.
