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No matter how much we yearn for peace, it seems to be elusive.
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These days more than ever..
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In one of his beatitudes,
Jesus speaks about peacemakers,
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calling them Children of God.
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So let's join a conversation with
our Good News team Lynn Shematek,
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Lauren Welch and Jon Shematek.
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Lynn: Blessed are the peacemakers.
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They shall be called children of God.
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what is a peacemaker?
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Jon: The first thing that came to mind
for me, today, actually had, it's more in
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the political arena and people that, are,
trying to resolve issues between nations
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diplomatically rather than by violence.
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Not everyone's called to be a diplomat,
the kind that will broker a peace
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agreement between warring factions.
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That's the first thing
that comes to my mind,
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Lynn: What about you, Lauren?
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Lauren: The first thing I think
about when I think of peacemakers
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are people who are bridge builders.
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they help connect people even in families
they help build bridges between people
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who are struggling with an issue, with an
illness, with how to deal with a parent,
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Jon: as you said that, it made me think,
Lauren, about all the different levels
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of personal relationships, that need
peace it is work to be a peacemaker.
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we could start, a very intimate
personal space by talking about being
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a peacemaker within your own self.
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I don't think I've ever
thought of that before.
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until you raised that just now for
me, thinking about being in families,
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I was thinking of Peacemakers as
being on a bigger scale, but it isn't.
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you've often said we need to love
ourselves first it does start at
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the individual heart and soul level.
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so I think there is A Peacemaker
role for internal peace.
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I'm not sure exactly how that works.
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Lauren: I think the word work is
instrumental because peacemaking, takes
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a lot of work, to find, peace within
yourself or to help others, the work
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that has to be done is getting our
agenda out of the way so we can see more.
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to become peaceful myself, I
have to be still and listen.
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listening to people around me,
listening to hopefully the divine.
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it takes a lot of work, to be peaceful.
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It's not something that comes easy.
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It certainly doesn't come easy for me.
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I'll speak for myself.
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Lynn: I
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think that most of us find it very
hard to be at peace with ourselves.
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It's very tumultuous times.
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We're all very busy.
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to become at peace means that
you need time to reflect.
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stop and really tune yourself with God.
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Become a child of God.
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And that's hard.
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That's very hard to do.
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I didn't even think about that,
being that to be at peace yourself.
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before you can become a peacemaker.
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Lauren: maybe that's why the last
half of that, Beatitude is for they
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will be called children of God.
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Children, are naturally peaceful.
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until they learn, what's mine and
what's yours, But as Jesus said,
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you need to become childlike.
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He didn't say childish, He
said childlike, which is
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thinking the best of others, trusting,
believing, in others, in yourself.
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Jon, when you said, how do we
become, peaceful within, I think,
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we have to trust ourselves.
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We have to believe in ourselves.
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as Lynn says, know the divine within us.
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when we put all of that
together, I think we're peaceful.
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children have that naturally,
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Jon: Yeah, that's a great perspective.
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I think one of the things that strikes
me about this is when it says they shall
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be called children of God and I love that
because I think it's really showing that,
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they shall be called a child of God, but
children of God emphasizes this sibling
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ship that we have with all of humanity.
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if we are, working to be peaceful
within ourselves, working to establish
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peace beyond ourselves, within family
members where there's discord, gosh, we
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have not hard to think of examples of.
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Disagreement, discord, what's
the most common word we heard
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in 2024 probably polarization.
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it's a fact of our lives these
days in our society, in our world.
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there's plenty of work to be done.
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One of the key tasks of carrying
out the blueprint of the Christian
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life is to be a peacemaker.
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think of how wonderful life would
be if everyone truly saw the
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other person as a child of God.
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would be heaven on earth.
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Yeah, to me, that's what it would be.
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it takes a lot of work to be a peacemaker.
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Lauren, you talked about this
inner sense, that you can achieve
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through, listening, praying, being
open to God's working within you.
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Are there other aspects
of being a peacemaker that
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are helpful to think about?
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Lynn: One of the things I think is that
the Beatitudes certainly are different.
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They are provocative, but they all
come back to the major thing, to
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treat your neighbor as yourself,
or as you would like to be treated.
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if you are at peace with yourself,
people will like to be with you because
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you're peaceful, gentle, in tune with
things, you'll listen to them, I
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would ask that the people watching or
listening to us, try to figure out how
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to become more peaceful in their heart,
or whatever part of their body needs to
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be peaceful see if they can actually
take that and go to someone else.
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See if they can give them the ability
to be peaceful within themselves.
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it starts from one little seed and keeps
going We could change society, really.
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Saw an interesting article at the New
York Times, about a man who has been
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writing for the op ed for 25 years, it
was his last article, and he said he
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thought the whole fabric of the American
public has been so changed in those
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25 years, before We were optimistic.
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We thought that if you worked hard
and did your due diligence you could
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lift yourself up into, a good life.
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And he said, now everyone is so sure
that everyone is out to get them.
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I thought that's probably true.
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And I think that if we, all become
peacemakers, wouldn't that be wonderful?
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Jon: Yeah, I think that example, if it
is true, underlines the need for the
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Christian life to bring hope to the world.
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As we've been talking about this,
Lynn you were saying, peace is almost
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something contagious I was thinking
about, almost in a liturgical way, how we
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have services at different times of year
that involve candle lighting and passing
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a candle from one person to another.
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it starts out to be a very dark place, but
then eventually the whole place is flooded
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with light from all these little candles.
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The candle in itself doesn't do much,
but a room full of candles is amazing.
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I think peace being a gift
that we can give to others.
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That's good news to me.
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thanks for being with us today.
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we've got, One more Beatitudes to go.
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It's a tough one.
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Stay tuned.
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Lynn: Lauren is up to it.
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Lauren: Until next time,
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Lynn: Take care.
