| Garden of the Heart |
Chapter 18 |
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In one of the prophets, God reveals His desire for the peace of His people by saying: “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace.” Always God desires His children to have peace. He wishes them to be at peace with Him, to be reconciled to Him, accepting His grace and love, and entering into fellowship with Him. He wishes them to have His peace, the very peace of God, in their hearts, amid all the trials and sorrows of life. Christ bequeathed His peace to His friends. “My peace I give unto you.” Then He wants them to be at peace among themselves. Strife between brothers is unseemly, undivine. If we are God’s children we will share with Him all these desires for peace.
In a narrower sense, a peacemaker is one who seeks to cure dissensions, to bring together those who are in any way estranged, to remove misunderstandings, and to promote peaceable relations among men. It is a noble mission, one to which every follower of Christ should be heartily devoted. The blessing upon the peacemaker is so great, so exalted, and so divine that every one should be eager to win it.
One way to be a peacemaker is to live a peaceable life oneself. Perhaps there has been too little attention paid to the cultivation of the graces of Christian life. Doctrinal soundness has been insisted upon as a test of Christian life more than sweetness of spirit and beauty of character has been. An irritable temper is too often regarded, not, indeed, as a quality to be admired and commended, but, at the worst, as an excusable infirmity, one that must be charitably tolerated, a weakness so common among good people that no one can reprove his neighbour for it. So many Christian men and women are touchy and easily offended, so easily hurt and so likely to hold a grudge, that it seems necessary to leave a wide margin in defining what religion requires of its followers in the matter of patience and forbearance.
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