In Matthew chapter 5 Jesus begins His famous Sermon on the Mount. In the beginning of this famous message Jesus gives what are called beatitudes. I have recently been struck by one of them over and over again. It says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Do you ever read Scripture and a verse or idea particularly strikes a hunger within you, or just even a slight yearning? First off, hunger is the sign of life. My wife worked in Hospice for a while and when she knew her patients were soon to pass they would lose their hunger for food. If we don’t have spiritual hunger we are likely close to spiritually death. Many of us feel hungry for more of God but focus on what we don’t have and get discouraged. But hunger and yearning for more is the beginning of God giving us more! Don’t let hunger be discouragement because of a perceived lack, but let hunger in your life for more give you confidence and affirmation that God is working.
Recently God has given me a hunger to have what Jesus was talking about when He said, “blessed are the peacemakers…” This morning I looked up the Greek behind “peacemaker.” The Greek word for peacemaker comes from the root word that means join, or come together in wholeness. I also looked at other times in Scripture where Jesus used the word “peace.”
One of those times was when there was a woman who had a promiscuous reputation who washed the feet of Jesus with her hair. After Jesus made peace during a fiasco caused by the religious leaders of the day over the reputation of this woman, Jesus looks at this woman and tells her, “your faith has saved you, go in peace.” Maybe it would be accurate to translate what Jesus said as, “go in wholeness.”
So what does it mean to be a peacemaker? I am still hungering for understanding here, but I do think it has a lot to do with bringing people into wholeness, wholeness together with one another and wholeness with God. What would it look like to be someone who walks into a room and makes people whole by our words and deeds? Everywhere I go I want that. I want to be a peacemaker.
