Blessed are the WHAT? — Our Bible App

Day 1 of 5: WAR (and violence), What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing!

Happy are people who make peace, because they will be called God’s children. -Matthew 5:9 (CEB)

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” We know this verse as part of the Beatitudes, but have you ever truly thought about the implications of this statement? Have you ever truly considered what it means to be a “peacemaker”? I recall my “lightbulb” moment when I began to see this as a condition to being a child of God. If I seek to be a “child of God”, then I must be a peacemaker. But what does that even mean?

For me, to answer that question, I have to take myself back to my two trips to the Middle East. A region of the world seemingly engulfed in a perpetual cycle of violence. In 2006, I traveled to Iraq to “bring peace” with a red, white, and blue sword in hand. For 13 months, my army brothers and I walked the streets of Baghdad and Iskandariya. For 13 months, we brutalized a people in the name of “peace,” but we brought violence and destruction. We never sought to make peace. We sought subjugation. It mattered not that the people we ran off the roads, fired warning shots at, and whose homes we trashed were just like us. They were men, women, and children who wanted nothing more than to live their lives in peace. But we came with a sword, and swords do not bring peace. They bring destruction.

Ten years later, however, I went back. Not to Iraq, but to another war zone. In 2016 I had the tremendous honor to spend two weeks in Palestine with the Christian Peacemaker Teams. We went there without guns or swords. We went with love and compassion. We went to help make peace. Unlike Iraq, where we tried to bludgeon others to a false sense of peace, what we witnessed in Palestine was the nonviolent act of loving others to peace. We went there to learn and, goodness, did we learn. What we saw, were shepherds and farmers quoting MLK, Gandhi, and Jesus. We learned from people who live under a brutal apartheid state talk about the nonviolent love of their enemies. I learned so much in those two weeks. I learned what “peace” means. I learned that it is more than the mere cessation of hostilities. I learned that peace can even exist in conflict. I learned that my very Western understanding of peace and nonviolence was fundamentally flawed… Continue Reading in the App

Natalie Drew

Day 1 of 5: WAR (and violence), What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing!

Start reading this 5-day devotional in the app. Find it on the Featured shelf.