Peace... What a strange word, a foreign concept, and a welcome reality. I have for sometime held the belief and advocated for the truth that a peace cannot be kept which has never been made. For the first time in a long time, I am seeing the benefits of the peace that has been made; for which we have fought, grown, survived, lost, grieved... and I am also getting a glimpse of how it looks to keep it.

This season, Advent has been a whole different experience. It has been interesting to see how the themes are naturally arising in life as it progresses. These are natural rhythms of grace beyond the structure that always seemed critical.

Today, around our table, we will reflect on the hope we have encountered in this season, and we will speak peace into the coming week. As I prepared for this time together, I was reading about Mary's song... how it looked for her to speak about a tangible peace, a lasting peace, a concrete change in circumstances that was rewriting people's lived reality. This quote that I read from our Illustrated Ministry materials caught my attention:

"The more public [hope] is, though, the more of a threat it becomes. The more Mary's words began echoing in the streets, the more people start humming along, the more dangerous the world becomes for her. But she knows this: it has always been this way. To take aim at the powers that be means becoming a target yourself. And she has been instructed by the angel: "Do not be afraid." She has the hope she inherited from Hannah and the Psalmist to let her know she's not alone in this imagining, this yearning for a better day. She carries both of those in her heart. And in her hands, perhaps, she carries the tools to begin building a better world."

In that is the hope that we need in these days... as well as the challenge for us each and all of us to make the peace it will take to find our place in the ongoing story of redemption.

How will you make peace in the coming week? How can I? Not just keeping the false peace that has been handed down by structures of oppression and violence that have benefitted from leading us to believe they were the peacegivers... but really and truly hoping forward into a peace that surpasses our ability to understand. What will that look like in the coming week?

Let us move forward making peace by living into the health that we are learning is possible. May we make peace with the life within us so we can offer authentic peace to those around us. May it spread like Mary's song of hope did. Look around for the tools that are already available to you, pick them up, feel their weight, recognize the power they contain, and find a place to begin or continue the work of peacemaking this week... look inside, look around. Start with yourself, however possible. And let it spread.

You're worth the effort, and you're capable of being the change.

I love you.