Peace for Today (Friday Devotional)

 

He shall judge between the nations
    and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into tpruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
    neither shall they learn war any more.

- Isaiah 2:4

The other day, I was playing with my 2-year old son Isaac—letting him chase me, throwing him up in the air, that kind of thing. At a certain point, I said to him, “Ikey, come tackle me!”

He paused for a second to process what he’d heard, then rushed toward me with his arms out. But when he lunged at me, it wasn’t to knock me down. He had clearly misunderstood what I’d said—instead of tackling me, he was tickling me.

On this week of Advent, when we reflect on the peace given to us in Christ and we look forward to the day when it will cover all creation, that little misunderstanding reminded me of a prophecy from Isaiah, where he promised that someday people “shall beat their sword into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” The vision is of a time when destruction gives way to production, when weapons of violence become tools for flourishing. Who knows, in that day maybe we’ll even see tackling become tickling.

We will not see that kind of world in its fullness until Christ’s return, when all things are made new. But for those who are in Christ, our calling is to live as citizens of that kingdom now—to be peacemakers in a world still dominated by conflict. It takes faith to do so, to strive for brotherhood when the more convenient path is domination. The world values battlefield victories more than it does treaties.

But for believers in Jesus, the world’s values are irrelevant—we are aliens here; our home is somewhere else entirely. So in faith, look for opportunities to extend kindness when your flesh would rather use force. After all, the world could use a little less tackling and a little more tickling.