Janet’s Letter to the Community
As I write we have just come to the end of a week in which we have had the church open for viewing the exhibition of the project relating to memories of childhood during the Second World War, that I mentioned in last month’s magazine. Visitors, adults and children alike, were invited to write a prayer for peace and add it to the display underneath our First World War memorial at the back of the church.
I was particularly challenged by an infant-school age child who, invited to write a prayer for peace, replied, “I don’t know what peace is.” I felt the panic. How to describe “peace” to a very young child? I almost said, “It’s when people aren’t fighting each other.” But of course, real peace is much more than that. It’s not the absence of something, but a positive presence. In the end I think I said something like, “It’s when people live together happily, thinking about what’s good for other people as well as ourselves, and doing things that make everyone feel good.” Well – it was off the top of my head!
In the Bible, “peace” or “shalom” is much more than the absence of warfare. It means a state of completeness, wholeness, well-ness, that includes living in harmony with oneself, one’s neighbours and the environment, and becoming the person God intended each one to be. As political turmoil in our country continues, prayer for peace has never been needed more. We ask that God will enable reconciliation so that our leaders will be able to concentrate on working for justice and the common good. We pray too that we will each be willing to play our part, to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, as we grow in our intention to be “people of peace”
With every blessing,
Janet