Peacemakers

Matthew 5:9

One of my accidental hobbies is collecting weird events. On this list of weird events is having two physical fights erupt while teaching. They happened the same year at the same school. One fight was your basic girl clawing boy (okay, weird), boy fighting back, and someone coming away from it with a bloody nose. The second I'm fuzzy on how it started (it was 15 + years ago), but I remember the part where I realized I couldn't physically break up the fight, nor could my sophomore students--so I grabbed some juniors from a friend's class and they stopped the fight.

Today's text is "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God" (Matthew 5:9). Someone who is called a Son of God must be someone who resembles God. At it's most basic level, those juniors resembled God. They stepped in at the right moment and pulled apart the kids who were fighting.

I think that God's love for peace reflects something beautiful in his character. What does he want for humanity? He wants peace. Peace is order, stability, security, and rest. Peace is a clear mind and a clear conscience.

So in whatever way we bring stability, security, rest, and clarity to life, we are peacemakers.

Peace is also about relationships that thrive . When I think of relationships that are at peace, I think of a student who once wrote about a friend that "there was a very fine gas between us". Now, I don't exactly know what that means and the phrasing makes me laugh, but I kind of feel like this describes friendships at their best. There's just this can't-get-my-finger-on-it feeling of being at home with someone. No only do peacemakers create a safe place for others to land, but they are refraining from the kinds of sin that create dissension: criticizing and gossiping.

I think peacemakers are relationship makers and protectors. They are God's salt in a world quickly going rancid.