Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

"Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace."

"Where there is hatred, let me sow love."

Where are the instruments of God's peace in the world? Are we praying to be counted among them?

It takes courage to be a peacemaker.

Peacemakers stand in the middle of the hostilities and deflect the bullets and blows with their own bodies, souls, and reputations. They seldom emerge unscathed.

Narcissism does not lend itself to peacemaking leadership.

Narcissism is a heavy burden to bear in any place of leadership. It cripples credibility, curtails collaboration, crushes constructive criticism, and cancels cooperation.

Not only that, it obscures vision, muddles thinking, and distorts perception.

So, how does one shake it? How do we abandon our self-absorbed decision-making and walk away from our self-destructive tendency to imagine the world as something that exists to serve our ambitious pride? Is there a cure?

When he came to Jesus, Nicodemus seemed to hint at the perplexity and impossibility of starting over. But starting over was the courageous and miraculous answer.

Jesus responded that it was a Spirit thing. Maturity does not happen overnight, but new beginnings can happen every day… for the willing.

God, the peacemaker is making peacemakers out of self-serving narcissists.

He is making wholistic thinkers out of compartmentalizing knee-jerkers.

"In academic life the temptation to worship the Part instead of the Whole is subtle and rationally appealing. In the sciences—natural and social—in the humanities, we learn an enormous amount of invigorating truth. We know this search is valid. And therefore it is an aspect of the search for God himself. " – Gordon W. …Allport, Waiting for the Lord: Meditations on God and Man

Peacemaking is an exercise in considering the whole and the holy. It is a brutal plunge into an ocean of honesty and where realism, optimism, and idealism meet.

"There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are." -Brennan Manning

Peacemaking happens when someone is heartbroken over broken peace, tormented by hostility, and devastated by injustice. Yet, it is embodied in the mission and lifestyle, only, of those who have been brought to life by the grace of God, enlivened by hope.

It looks like compassion.

"Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It's the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. " — Frederick Buechner

Where are God's peacemakers?

Start with the mirror and a willing heart.