Peace

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:12-17 ESV).

The Apostle Paul writes about the “peace of Christ” in our reading today. So often we find that peace nearly impossible to achieve in view of our circumstances. In the classic film, Wings of Desire, one of the patrons in a Berlin library asks “Why is peace so unattainable?” Well, one of the monuments in Washington, D.C. seems to have proven that true. There are countless monuments to wars and their heroes, but relatively few to celebrate peace. Even the “Peace Monument,” erected in 1877 at the foot of Capitol Hill where Pennsylvania Avenue ends, is really more about war than peace, and like the city's many war memorials, people have bickered over it at least as much as they've celebrated its theme of tranquility. Construction began in the spring of 1877, but the memorial was never really finished. It was supposed to include a decorative fountain around its base and four street lamps at the corners. Instead, the marble base of the pedestal includes four bare holes that dump water out into the surrounding basin, and the four granite piers that were meant to hold the "artistic" lampposts have naked screws sticking out of them, waiting patiently (for 135 years now) for the lampposts to be installed. Sometimes it may seem as if we are no more than an unfinished work waiting for peace to come. The circumstances and difficulties of life may seem to press in on us to the point that we believe we shall be crushed under the weight of them. However, peace is available to all of those who come to Christ. Just as the woman crying her tears of grief are depicted as being consoled by the angelic recorder in this monument, so we can be assured that Christ both records and resolves our grief through his sacrificial death. He only waits for us to come to him. The end of suffering and grief has already been accomplished. We only wait for the final end to be pronounced. Thank God for this mighty victory of grace!