Planting Peace

God, I’ve started writing twice a day, morning at the page, evening here. I just realized, I am writing at night in part to avoid the nightly news, which is never, ever, positive; is always filled with some new act of violence. There is never an evening without a violent crime. So in desperation, I go over to my shelf of notebooks, year upon year of dialog with You, and choose one at random, asking You to guide my hand please, and this is what I found. It is so spot-on to what I am feeling now, even though it is five plus years old. So here it is:

God, I feel sort of numb. Like, if I experience my feelings, I will either sink or explode. I am shutting down, closing off pieces of myself, and how do I not do that? I really really need to hear from You.

You can’t light a fuse in one place and then be surprised when the bomb goes off, somewhere else.

But Lord, couldn’t You make it rain? Put that fuse out?

Your culture is lighting fuses everywhere, connected to bigger and bigger explosives. The horrible wonder isn’t that violence is happening–the horrible wonder is that it hasn’t happened in many more places.  Your whole nation is on fire. You meet anger with greater anger; you live on retaliation; you fight fire with fire.

Lord, there are all those verses about last days. How everything gets worse–violence, wars, famine, earthquakes, violence in the weather–and the end is not yet, You said, which I always have taken to mean, but wait, it gets worse. So how can I, how can any of us actually believe in goodness and peace here? In Your Kingdom coming, here? In working for peace, here? Aren’t we just kidding ourselves? What’s the use? Meaning, our love and sincerity don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, because everything is actually going to get worse, like a spreading poison taking over a clean lake and…

This isn’t a lake. This is a River.

Ok, whatever, like a spreading poison taking over a river, and–

STOP. Ssshhh. Just stop. The tears you won’t let yourself cry are blinding you. “Of the increase of His government and of Peace there will be no end.” That is the River.

But Lord, there are people, deluded, sick, whatever, and they are dumping poison into Your River.

The biggest poison of all, the most potent, is the poison that says I don’t care, I Am not involved, I have given up on your world. Do you have any idea how much I, the Lord, grieve: My tears will not stop until “there is no more crying or sorrow or pain or death.” Not until “the old order of things has passed away.”

Lord, what message can I bring?  I am seeing me kneeling, planting seeds in a garden, believing for flowers, believing for harvest. Every farmer lives on that faith, huh?

And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Begin to speak your truth. Not your opinion–opinions can be argued with–but your truth.

Lord, what? What is my truth?

That you love Me, and you trust Me. That you grapple, as others do, with hard questions, but fro a framework that assumes that I Am, that I Am Good, that I love you, and I love your world.

Gosh, Lord, the field goes on and on and on, as far as I can see.

This is your life’s work, sowing seeds of goodness and kindness and peace.

Lord, you know how I think nobody cares what I think.

I care what you think. I care especially what you think. If you–and others like you–lose faith, faith in Me, faith in My heart, faith in My goodness, faith in a glorious future, then the world really will go dark, You–all of you who believe–are the light of the world, now. You are a city set on a hill, now. Build My Kingdom, plant My Kingdom. Speak your peace, now. Add to the storehouse of goodness. Make a beautiful difference. The world needs you, and others like you.