What is a peacemaker? – It is not just an absence of war – It’s linked to justice – peacemakers have to be rooted in justice -what is owed to another person, and to God. Jesus is the perfect peacemaker, because he came to offer his life and death as a sacrifice to make right what was wronged against God, and to heal our relationship with one another. The prince of peace.
We’re culturally quick to assume this beatitude speaks only about sexual purity. We live in a highly sexualised world – AND we have a Christian world that has hyper focused on ‘what not to do’ with our bodies, and has forgotten ‘what to do, to tend to our hearts’.
Our Christian faith hinges on Mercy. God didn’t give us what we deserve, he gifts us mercy. Do we give others better than they deserve? or do we look to get even? to act from a place of self-entitlement? If there is anything we should be known for, it’s people who are merciful, because we follow the model set before us in Christ, our merciful saviour.
Do we notice what someone is owed and hunger for them to receive that?
These include all the major fights for justice we know about – fighting for life, and for freedom, against enslavement of all kinds in countries where it’s obvious the vulnerable are held to work and do things against their will, and in the western world, the vulnerable secretly held trapped in certain life styles resulting from human trafficking
As with most things with God, those unattached to earthly power are the same ones who are promised they shall inherit the earth. This makes intuitive sense when we look at gifting someone something that is beautiful and to be cared for. We wouldn’t want to give it to the person who is going to wield their power over it and push it to destruction, but instead gift it to the one who is disinterested in having power over it, and instead is meek enough to accept the gift and to want to care for it.
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On the Living Fullness Podcast we have begun a series on the Beatitudes and exploring how each of these bring the commandments to fulfilment, creating a path of abundance in this life and the next. This episode particularly focuses on the 1st Beatitude and the various detachments we need to have including what Thomas Aquinas mentions as needing to ‘Despise what Jesus despised on the Cross, and Love what Jesus loved on the Cross’. These detachments include putting all else to the service of God, and ensuring we have our hearts and minds rightly ordered.
‘Mercy is something that’s unfathomable until you experience it. It obliterates the walls of ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’ we construct in our human minds and builds them back up with a Divine plan in mind – to get us all to Heaven.’
Elise writes about the impact of being shown mercy as a child Vs the need to show mercy to each other as adults, so that we become more open to and aware of God’s Divine Mercy.
Reaching new depths At Virtue Ministry, we have been given the challenge to focus on a weekly word and scripture passage to apply to our life. Like any spiritual challenge, we often only can get out what we put in, but sometimes that requires guidance or hearing the experiences of […]
Giving Unwanted Forgiveness Forgiveness is something so many people struggle with. For some, it’s over small things. For others, it’s over significant things that few people could truly say they would be able to forgive. Recently, I read a book by a Holocaust survivor called Eddie whose message was that […]