Peace

What is peace? Sunday morning I was able to hear a great sermon on peace by Ross Mitchell. I am not going to be able to convet exactly what was said, but will do my best to get the main points out.

Ross started out by saying the world has never and probably will never have peace again. Since Cain killed Able there has always been something going on. He said some people view of peace is when the world stops to re-load. Unfortunately that is the case all too often.

He then brought the lesson to a personal level saying that many of us don't want peace, we just don't want trouble. He mentioned people in the church that hate each other simply avoiding the other and calling that peace. But that was not peace. Often we just like to avoid confrontation and fixing our problems and say we're just trying to "keep the peace" or "not rock the boat".

His next point also struck a cord with me. He mentioned often we want peace at the expense of values. While he said this is rare, there are cases where we will sacrifice the truth for peace. Mentioning several examples of Christ he said this was also not peace. He made reference to the now infamous "gay bishop" and how churches that condemned that action were told they were not keeping the peace. But Christ calls us to call a sin a sin as well.

To me peace is almost impossible. It is hard to ballance peace with confronting the sins and problems (including our own), but Ross did an excellent job of showing that while we need to hold fast to what is true, we need to be as loving as possible.