Seeds of peace

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But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness. (James 3:17-18)

Plant seeds of peace - reap righteousness. Heaven certainly knows the difficulties we face on this earth all because seeds of peace are not sown as often as those of discord! Relationships are just hard work. Living within communities of any sort can be challenging, to say the least, but it is the way we live on this earth - all mixed up together, with all our hurts and hangups, muddled up in one big mess. I have come to realize we are responsible to create the environment of peace that we so desperately desire. It might be a bit of a challenge to 'sow peace', but we are called to continually work at creating harmony within relationships because it reflects God's love to those we live in community with.

Promoting peace isn't all that simple, though. There are all kinds of 'personalities' and 'temperaments' we deal with on a daily basis. Some are quite deliberately involved in our lives and others we might have a more passive involvement with throughout the day. Notice that we are not told to be peacekeepers, but rather to be peacemakers. In other words, we bring Jesus into the room when we enter and hopefully leave just a little bit of him when we leave. Righteousness is just a fancy word for 'right-living'. Seeds of peace actually can lead to some pretty big changes in the way we interact with others and how they interact with us.

How hard is it to show no favoritism, especially when we interact with someone we really don't agree with versus someone we are close to, admire, and even 'like'? We want to 'side with' the one we 'like' and kind of move away from the one we find it hard to interact with, don't we? Jesus never gave us permission to avoid hard relationships. He just gave us the commission to plant seeds of peace. I won't sugar coat it - this one will be hard. The 'harvest' only changes when the 'seed' that is planted changes. Just sayin!

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