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Peace is a pursuit. You say of the righteous person, “He
must seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:11). Peace is
active, not passive.

Word made flesh, You have come to put our feet on
the way of peace, to lead us in ways of living that bring
peace. When I consider how You were willing to humble
Yourself fully so that You could bring to us the gift
of Your peace, I am confronted with the many ways that
I will not humble myself even slightly to bring peace.

During this Christmas season, I have found myself
captured by the words of the classic hymn “Let There
Be Peace on Earth” by Jill Jackson and Sy Miller. “Let
there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” These
words may be derived from the Prayer of St. Francis of
Assisi, “Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.”
So, I think, living in this world, in the midst of strife and
anger, what would it mean for me to be an instrument of
Your peace?

Our world is more than ever defined by our conflicts:
accusations, punches and counterpunches, rhetoric
growing increasingly shrill until reason and truth are
left trampled, and collateral damage in the war of slogans
and talking points.

Bring the focus in tighter. Little arguments, petty
responses later regretted, disagreements blown out of
proportion, and hurt feelings, nurtured and fed, occur in
abundance.

Let peace begin with me.
It takes on a new look as I view it through the prism
of my everyday circumstances. When I let it become
something more than a Christmas sentiment, it loses its
soft focus, and I find it to be all sharp edges and harsh
angles, demanding outrageous grace and humility that
is beyond me. What about when Christmas is safely
packed away and out of sight for another year, will I
keep the reality of Christmas unpacked in my life? Will
I be an instrument of Your peace?

Now, whether I am shining the light of these words
on the world or on my country or on my family or on
people whose lives intersect with mine at any juncture,
the picture changes—the light falls on me. The focus
is no longer on others and what they might have done
to deserve my anger. The focus is now on me and what
I can do to be an instrument of Your peace.

Outrageous grace. Humility that is beyond me.
I have no other way for peace to begin with me, than
for peace to begin in me. Dying to pride, yielding control,
I must allow peace to flow from me like rivers of
living water.

What is Your call on my life? Peace: “Since as members
of one body you were called to peace” (Colossians 3:15 NIV).
Can I mouth words about “God’s call” and
not offer myself to be an instrument of Your peace?

Make me an instrument of Your peace.

From Pursuing the Christ by Jennifer Kennedy Dean

How perfect, Lord, that Your Advent took the form
of a newborn baby.

My mind’s eye sees You: tiny, squirming, wrinkled,
held protectively in the arms of Your mother. I look upon
You with wonder that You would come in such vulnerability
and helplessness so I could know the thoughts
of God. The Word, fleshed in a newborn, speaks to me
today of new beginnings and reborn hope.

Surrounded by things that wear out and disappoint,
I forget how “new” feels. I settle for patched up and propped
up, losing sight of new. Relationships, dreams, even faith, if
I am honest—surfaces scarred and chipped by failures and
failings—become so familiar in their shabbiness that I leave
them in their diminished condition, accepting reality.

But today, with my heart gazing on Jesus in the form
of a newborn baby, I remember new. I remember that
the moment in which heaven and earth intersected, the
most holy event in all eternity, found its platform in a
newborn baby. I remember that when You—Most High
God, Creator of heaven and earth—revealed Yourself in
flesh, You proclaimed the possibility that all things could
be new and could be continually renewed. Always new.

“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation;
old things have passed away, and look, new
things have come.”
—2 Corinthians 5:17

Old things are passed away, all things are made new.
I am forgetting what lies behind and looking forward to
what lies ahead. New, and then new again—that is Your
gift to me today. A fresh slate, a new beginning, outrageous
hope defined only by potential and possibility

From Pursuing the Christ

You tell the story as it occurred on the earth side of the grand stage, You keep hinting at heaven’s role. The record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, born on earth to a mother named Mary and her husband named Joseph, though sparsely stated without elaboration, reminds me of what the Word made flesh has revealed to my heart. The details are there, but in shadow.

The genealogy reminds me that for generations— in fact since time began—You were in the process of fulfilling Your promise. While Your people thought You slow or even negligent, the promise was in progress. The ancestors through whom the Promised One would be revealed were being carefully hand selected. The groundwork was being laid. The picture was being framed and given texture and context. The story was being written, detail upon detail, building to its climactic event when the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.

I am reminded that You have the end firmly fixed from the beginning. You alone know everything that must be in place for the time to be ripe for the promise. You are always in the process of revealing the promise. You are careful and deliberate, but not slow. Remind me, as I watch to see You move in my circumstances today, that I am not caught in any timebound, earthbound problem. I am not enslaved to any need that presents itself in my experience. You are at work in a bigger, broader universe, beyond what I can see.

By the time the promise is revealed in my life, it has been worked out through people, each one changed as she becomes part of the genealogy of the promise. Each one handpicked and carefully placed along the way. Each one blessed as the promise sweeps him up into its orbit and moves him to march to its eternal rhythm.

As with the Ultimate Promise—Jesus, the Promise of all promises—when my promise is revealed in my circumstances, it is not for me alone. It is not just for my satisfaction or for my fulfillment, but rather it is the Word made flesh. It is the Word of promise that is now made evident and made visible in my circumstances. The earth was just the setting in which the Word made flesh could become visible. My little circumstances are just the setting in which Your Word to me can become visible.

Remind me when I forget. You are always in the process of keeping Your promise. In my life, a promise is always in progress. Thank You.

From Pursuing the Christ

Such an economy of language pronounces so momentous
an event. No grandiose words or well-turned
phrases could have spoken more elegantly. The facts
speak for themselves. The wonder is not stirred by the
reporting, but by the act of eternal love. Two simple
statements and the story is reported. But these two
sentences describe the moment toward which all of
history had been building since the first molecule of
matter was spoken into being.
Anticipated and longed for by heaven and earth, this
action was so stunning that words could only detract.
“God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words
be few” (Ecclesiastes 5:2). How quick I am to speak
and to string words into sentences and spin sentences
into paragraphs to fill any void in chatter. But I see how
spectacularly the arrangement of a few words—nouns
left mostly unmodified and verbs left naked—speak the
stark and wonderful truth. Silence speaks that for which
words are worthless.
No words can ever express the enormity of the Word
made flesh lying in a manger. “He is before all things,
and by Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
But on that holy night in Bethlehem, You cooed and
cried and nursed at Mary’s breast. Jesus, Your hands,
which would soon feel the tear of nails, curled around
her finger. Your feet, which would soon be pierced for
my transgressions, kicked the air in awkward infancy.
Your head, which would soon be gouged by thorns, lay
peacefully in Mary’s arms. No words. No words.

From Pursuing the Christ