"Peace"

One of the reasons why these Olympics in particular are so fascinating is because of the diplomatic tensions that exist when two nation-states meet in sports competition (often used as an analogy for war) while their respective governments and armies may in fact be engaged in actual war. How can athletes from the former Soviet republic of Georgia compete against opponents from Russia while knowing of the invasion? What is going on in the minds of Israelis, Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, and Americans when they stare each other down across a swimming pool, ball field, or track? Will any big names come out in the press against the nations that are not doing anything about the genocide in Darfur?

A quote from the above article:

The Beijing Olympics have morphed into the anxiety games. Beneath the veneer of architectural miracles and omnipresent smiles and the "one world, one dream" slogan, there is unease, exacerbated by a secretive Communist regime that rations information. No info, no closure. There are 100,000 Chinese security troops patrolling Beijing, all standing as still as scarecrows, many with the young, porcelain faces of toy soldiers. They are stationed on every street corner, ubiquitous under newly planted trees that line the sidewalks. They are numerically impressive but not especially comforting.

I think this further illustrates the difference between what the world defines as peace, and what the God of the Bible defines as peace.

The former declares that peace exists as long as no shots are being fired. The absence of conflict. We smile awkwardly at each other, dampening down anxiety repeatedly while little glimpses of the resentment and uneasiness simmering underneath will peek through during times of stress. This happens in sports, it happens in workplaces, in marriages, in churches.

God desires peace to be so much more than the absence of conflict, but rather the presence of justice, wholeness, and acceptance. "Blessed are the peacemakers" - peace is something that needs to be worked at, not just achieved by having no conflict.

As a person who is non-confrontational by nature, it's often easy for me to settle for the first kind of peace - as long as there's no conflict, between Shally and myself, in church, in leadership, at work, at home, then things are "cool." However, I've been learning that it's not enough to just avoid confrontation - I need to actively work for wholeness, with heavy doses of grace, in order to bring all of my relationships into the kind of peace God has his heart set on for his people.