GROWING THE LIGHT OF HOPE

WEEK 7

INTRODUCTION


  There is nothing fluffy or easy about being a peacemaker. Peacemaking creates healing and wholeness with courageous, compassionate love. Peacemakers understand the need for forgiveness and the blessings of diversity. They seek restorative justice, offering little bits of good wherever they can in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Peacemakers are blessed children of God, doing the work of their Peacemaking Parent.


Saint Paul tells us that our work as peacemakers is a ministry of reconciliation. Reconciliation literally means “to make good again.” It is the “restoration of friendly relations, to become friendly again.” Peacemaking! Paul reminds us that this is what Jesus has done for each of us. It is the work we now carry forward as Christ’s ambassadors. It is NEW CREATION work. As peacemaking ambassadors, we are part of God’s ongoing work to heal, restore, reconcile, and make peace.


THIS WEEK’S SCRIPTURE

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 

2 Corinthians 5:17-20


INVITATIONS

  • Reflect on this week’s scripture. Are there any words or ideas that especially resonate with you or challenge you?
  • Over the past weeks, has your idea of peace changed? What has been your biggest insight? Challenge? Comfort?



  • How might you be called to be a peacemaking ambassador?
  • Our prayer throughout this series has been the Prayer of St. Francis. Pray it this week as a summation of all that peacemaking and reconciliation mean for you personally, for our world, and for God’s ongoing creative work.

THIS WEEK’S PRAYER

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.