Peace.

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word P E A C E?

I have a noisy two year old son, so the first thing I think of is how nice it is to have some peace and quiet when he’s finally asleep in bed! But I think to ‘define’ Peace, it can have more than one meaning. We often think of how important peace is in relationships - whether we’re thinking about relationships between countries or between colleagues or between family members. Unfortunately conflict is a necessary part of life at times, but after an argument if the relationship is good, we try to “make peace” again, don’t we.

In my second year at university, I lived in a house of 6 girls. Sadly two of them had a big disagreement and it totally divided the house. The atmosphere was awful. We all hated living in that environment until eventually one of the girls moved out. So the conflict ended but there wasn’t ever peace between them again.

But Peace isn’t the absence of conflict it’s much deeper than that. As I said, I think peace can have more than one meaning. One of the definitions for peace in the dictionary is a state of mental and emotional calm. Being at peace within. The word “peace” carries with it a sense of well-being. The words ‘Shalom’ in Hebrew and ‘Salaam’ in Arabic, which mean “peace”, are used as a greeting in Israel and in Arabic countries respectively – the full greeting translates as “Peace be upon you” – so this greeting carries with it a blessing.

This goes to show that people from all backgrounds and cultures recognise how important peace is. If we take one look around the world today we can all agree that we don’t see any of these definitions of peace do we? You only have to watch the news for a few minutes and you see there are so many wars, crime, terrorism and closer to home there are broken relationships everywhere you look.

So, if we all recognise that peace is important and possible then why is it so hard to actually achieve this?  

I would say that the reason we all desire peace is because God has placed that desire in us, to live in peace. He is a God of peace. But the reason we don’t see much peace when we look around is because we have all turned away from God. We’ve gone our own way, because we don’t have God as number one. He isn’t the most important thing in our lives and instead we’ve put ourselves as number one.

There are consequences for those choices. We don’t have peace with God. We don’t have peace with one another. We don’t have peace within ourselves.

Some people say that peace can be found by looking inside yourself. There are many self-help books, podcasts and Instagram accounts available telling you how to achieve that. Many people say you have to love yourself more or practise mindfulness. I’m sure these approaches can be helpful for some people, but looking inside yourself isn't the solution - because actually the problem starts deep inside every human being. As I said before, I believe it is because we have all turned away from God and gone our own way that we don’t have deep and lasting peace.

So what’s the solution then? We need to turn around. Stop putting ourselves as number one. Put God in the place he deserves. 

I realise that some of you may not even believe in God. Or maybe you do believe in him but he seems far away – some of you pray to God and ask him for help when you have a problem. Or maybe you just aren’t sure what you believe. Perhaps you don’t think it’s very important either way – maybe you think we can’t really be sure and so you just don’t worry about it. 

But personally I have found much peace through being a Christian, both within myself and in my relationships with others, and most importantly in my relationship with God.

How can I be sure of this? Well, the Bible tells us that we can know what God is like by looking at Jesus Christ, because he is God the Son, who became human. When we look at Jesus we see the most peaceful man that ever lived.

He had the most reason of anyone to be angry – he was completely innocent but was beaten and put on a cross to die, while people laughed at him, mocked him and insulted him. He also had the power to stop them. But he chose not to. Jesus had the power to calm storms and raise the dead – he could have silenced them when they were being so cruel to him. But he said nothing. Instead he said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” 

But Jesus isn’t just an inspirational example of how we should love our enemies, how we can be peaceful. He died for a purpose and it wasn’t just to provide an example for us to follow. He died because of our wrongdoing. He died to take the punishment that we deserve for the way we have treated other people and the way we have treated God. He died to bring peace in our relationship with God and peace in all our relationships, including peace inside ourselves.

By Jo Ridd.