I understand now what Charles Dickens might have meant when he writes, “It was the best of times. It was the saddest of times.” That fictitious description fits my current state of affairs to a T. When people have asked me this past month how I’m doing, I have to stop and determine which answer to give. Should I tell them the part about how I had rediscovered relational depths that I’d only ever dreamed of before? Or should I tell them instead about recently losing someone I dearly loved to an unexpected heart attack? Do I tell them that my wildest ministry ambitions are teetering on precipice of being actualized? Or do I tell them that I’m waiting to hear whether someone very close to me has cancer?

There are times that life seems to move more quickly than I can keep up with it. The landscape of circumstances is sometimes shaped by careful planning, investing, and making little decisions that lead up to a well-determined course. And then there are those times that it’s more akin to a landslide, such as drastic change whether we ask for it or not. 

Through all the uproarious clamor of a life swept away in the current, my heart has been thirsty to be alone with God. It’s in this place that the litter of my overwhelmed mind is momentarily suspended, where God breaks in and let’s his peace seep into my soul. 

As I rest in the secret and peaceful place of the most High, I write this blog to you.  I am thinking about how Christ went to great lengths to make peace with us. It didn’t matter what we looked like, how much sin we had committed, what kind of job we had or whether we were black or white.  Christ made peace with us through His death on the cross.

Have you ever gone to great lengths to make peace with someone?  Peace is a harmonious state of mind in which conflict is either absent or resolved without violence and in which relationships are mutually empowering and cooperative.

Today I find myself repeating that urgent message of reconciliation to others.  It’s time to make peace between you and God, and then between you and man.  Regardless to what others may have done to you in your past, you must love peace and work for peace in that relationship.

Think about your actions!  Are you a peace-breaker, peace-faker or peace-maker?

Peace-breakers are those people who go out of their way to break down relationships; to cause trouble and division. They are deliberately confrontive people who love to confront and disagree with everything.

Peace-fakers prefer ‘peace’ over truth. They will go to any lengths to avoid any kind of conflict/confrontation/unrest. In doing, so they settle for a counterfeit peace that is based on avoiding the real issues.

A peace-maker longs for peace, works for peace, and sacrifices for peace.  A peace-maker does not have to give their opinion all the time and they are able to walk away quietly and avoid a conflict when the situation calls for it. Peace-makers are prepared to put others’ well-being above their own comfort level. They are different from peace-fakers, because they are prepared to tell the truth and trust God for the outcome.  Last, peace-makers are motivated out of love – God’s love.

When Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God,” he does not tell us how to become a son of God. He simply says that sons of God are in fact peacemakers.

God is a peace-loving and a peace-making God.  Therefore, our goal should always be to make peace with man.  Sometimes there are wounds of the spirit as well as the flesh that we dare not trivialize or ignore.  We hurt and have been hurt – sometimes maliciously, sometimes not on purpose.  But a hurt is, nonetheless, a hurt.  Could this be the reason that scripture spends so much time on the issue of forgiveness?

Reconciliation with others begins with God. (Genesis 32:1-2) When we seek to enter his presence, he reveals to us those relationships that are broken and prompts us to make them right. Biblical reconciliation is powerful and spiritually rewarding.  It is the process of two previously alienated parties coming to peace with each other, no longer counting their offenses against one another.

I charge you today, to make [follow]  peace with man (Hebrews 12:14).  As God has forgiven you, you are to forgive those who have hurt you. As God has reconciled with you, you are to reconcile with others.  When you do, “May the Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26).