Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Peacemakers (08/15/24)
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TITLE: Desires of My Heart | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dave Mudford
08/18/24 -
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ADD TO MY FAVORITES
I want to make a difference
in helping people through their strife,
someone they can trust with hurt
sharing the hardest things in life.
I want to be a peacemaker
bringing weary souls together,
willing to go the extra mile
supporting through stormy weather.
I want to follow Christ’s example
prepared to give beyond the easy,
connecting in ways not passive
even when love makes me queasy.
I want to love my family
with a courage that helps them grow,
not so I can get my needs met
but so more of God’s grace they know.
I want to fight for justice
giving innocence a voice,
standing up for what is right
so, in truth we can rejoice.
I want to be a faithful man
true to what God calls me to do,
living in the strength He gives
all His love and peace pursue.
I want to be a safe refuge
not frightened by the friction,
for I know love is greater still
seen in Jesus crucifixion.
I want the desires of my heart
to be held safely in God’s hand,
secure in His understanding
as with the broken, I now stand.
Note: Often Christians have a narrow view of what defines a peacemaker. It is seen as a passive pursuit, where someone just brings compromise between two parties. Sometimes that can be an important aspect of what a peacemaker does. However, it can and does involve so much more which the poem above attempts to explore.
Jesus is the ultimate peacemaker. His greatest act was to bring peace and connection between his Father and mankind. He did this not in a passive and peaceful way but through an act of extreme violence ( granted - inflicted by others). Standing firm in love despite all the pressures to take an easier way – he chose to be a disrupter, to confront injustice and prejudice. He stood with the broken and discarded in a way that challenged the perceptions of the day. He brought peace not by being indifferent but by listening to his Father’s heart, then living as a response in love to all of those he encountered.
If we are to be true peacemakers, we need to do much the same. As Paul states in Philippians 2 : 4 – 5 NLT "Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. YOU MUST HAVE THE SAME ATTITUDE THAT CHRIST JESUS HAD" (emphasis mine). We need to be prepared to surrender our rights, instead embracing all the grace and compassion needed to help hurting people come together. Helping connection and intimacy to grow not through compromise alone, but by giving people a better understanding of the true love and peace God brings.
Jesus in his famous sermon on the mount proclaimed “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” Have you ever wondered why they will be called children of God? Just maybe its because they will be displaying the very Father heart of God in what they do and say. They will be as the old saying goes “a chip of the old block”.
God was prepared to pursue us and do whatever it took to bring peace, connection and intimacy back into our relationship. The question then that our hearts needs to answer is – what are we prepared to do, to be the peacemakers that he has called us to be?
The journey will not be easy, but it will be blessed!
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Blessings
Nicely done.