God of Peace

Relationships are messy. Communities are hard. Trying to accomplish anything with other persons is a challenge. 

Just ask anyone who has ever been in on a group project. 

There's research that says that more and more, we are a people who listen to respond, not to hear, and that we're all just waiting impatiently for our own chance to speak. And in our short-attention-span, 3-second-soundbyte, everything-at-our-fingertips world, it's not that hard to believe. 

But we're not the first generation to be like this. This is a problem that goes way back. 

Check out 1 Corinthians. 

Paul is giving the church at Corinth instructions on how to control the chaos that has broken out in their fellowship. Everyone is showing up and jockeying for position, arguing over everything, speaking over each other, tripping over each other, trying to push their way into the center, trying to shout over the noise, and Paul steps in with his letter and says...this isn't the way. 

God is not a God of disorder, but of peace (14:33). 

Or, put another way, with this much chaos among you, you do not look very much like God's people. 

And here we are, nearly two thousand years later, and in our short-attention-span, 3-second-soundbyte, everything-at-our-fingertips world where we're listening to respond, ready to be outraged, and constantly passing judgment on the smallest glimpses of someone's not-so-private life, we do not look very much like God's people. 

God's people are marked by their love. Or, they're supposed to be. That's what the Bible tells us - they will know we are Christians by our love. (And if you come from my religious tradition, you probably just sang that last sentence.) 

Not just love, but other good things, too - peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Think about these things for a second and think about how often - or how seldom - you see them in many arenas of our postmodern lives. Think about how often - or how seldom - you demonstrate them in your own postmodern life. 

Think about how countercultural these things are right now and think about what you'd have to think, what you'd have to wonder, what questions you'd have to be asking, if you saw them in someone. 

How are you not stressed? How are you not angry? How are you not hurried? How are you not bothered? Where does this peace in your life come from? 

If ever we were to find it, and everywhere we found it, we would have to conclude only one thing: it must be from God. 

After all, this is what He said we're supposed to be like. So He must be the one, then, that makes it possible.