In early March each year, millions of women all over the world meet together to pray. One year they were praying for peace or, more specifically, that all Christian believers become builders of peace. This theme was thought out by the Japanese women who live in the city incinerated by the first atomic bomb.
They believed that peace is not an absence of war or noise and it’s not found by accident. Peace has to be built, and built out of materials that are given by the Holy Spirit of God. The very word in the original New Testament for peace is ‘harmony’ like different notes which make up a chord, or different instruments playing as an orchestra, or different people making a family or a team.
This kind of peace has got three levels and the first one is the peace we each need in our own soul. How can the discordant jarring elements within our nature be integrated and harmonised? Listen to Paul: ‘I see inside me a state of war tearing me apart, who will deliver me? Thank God, Jesus Christ will’.
Level 2. How can peace be built between different people? Listen again: ‘Be humble, loving, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven you’.
Level 3. How can peace be built between nations? By translating love into social action, and that’s what the word ‘justice’ means. In other words, love your neighbour as yourself.
So peace is a positive life force. It’s the name we give to ‘love cement’. So today, pray for that kind of peace in yourself and in the world.