Today is World Peace Day and due to a very slow M25 this morning (2 hours to go 20 miles!!!),on my way to Cambridge YFC and Haverhill Schools Initiative, I had quite a lot of space to think through some stuff.

I found it interesting that the reading I follow from the Northumbria Community were today partly based around Peace. Micah chapter 5 prophesies Jesus, saying he will be the source of all our peace. Luke chpater 2 brings in the shepherds, with the angels promising peace on earth to whom all God favours.

While driving – those lands that are not experiencing peace, are they out of favour with God? My mind turned to Iraq as an obvious country of the moment. I find it hard to understand how a whole country can be out of favour with God, so am I missing something here in my interpretation, or am I refusing to accept some good hard teaching? I am not sure, and decided 2 hours in a stationary car was not long enough to think about something so deep.

Maybe the angels and Micah here were talking more about personal peace. That peace you get when you know you are following Jesus- life can be crappy, but you know God is there in it with you and you know you are in the right place and you have a peace which is virtually impossible to explain to others. I guess that is because we have an individual God who deals with individuals on an individual basis.

Sometimes, Evangelicals tell me that passages like this refer to the ultimate peace … you know, that peace we won’t find until we die and go to heaven. Well I’m kinda fed up with that kind of thinking cos I think God wants to have peace and lots of the good stuff while we are alive as well. My faith is more than hoping for stuff when I’m dead!

In the Northumbria Community year, today is also a saints day when Henri Nouwen is remembered. I have not had the privilege of reading much of his work but this was a man who explored the meaning of personal peace. I do know, however, typical themes of Nouwen’s book’s were a solitude and peace of heart towards oneself; a welcoming and undemanding hospitality towards others; and an attitude of constant prayer and devotion to God.

More than this, he did not just write about it but tried to live it out as well. He wrote from real experience rather than hearsay – when people do that, what they say just seems to be so much more powerful. I guess that is why the Celtic community at Northumbria think of him as a saint.

In living this out Nouwen moved to the L’Arche community as a helper and pastor to those with mental handicaps. He wrote this about his life:

… Moving from teaching university students to living with mentally handicapped people was, for me at least, a step towards the platform where the father embraces the kneeling [prodigal] son. It is the place of light, the place of truth, the place of love. It is the place where I so much want to be, but am so fearful of being. It is the place where I will receive all I desire, all that I ever hoped for, all that I will ever need, but it is also the place where I have to let go of all that I most want to hold on to. It is the place that confronts me with the fact that truly accepting love, forgiveness and healing is often much harder than giving it. It is the place beyond earning, deserving and rewarding. It is the place of surrender and complete trust …



I think it sounds like he found the place of peace. That’s cool – he found peace while he was still alive. That encourages me and I hope you too.