I saw a picture today of a man in a tee-shirt which said, "Give peace a chance". Then it had a photo of a big gun and it said, "I'll cover you if it doesn't work out." Where did we ever get the notion that we could be protected by violence? Later in the day, I saw an article from a few years back in which President Jimmy Carter is telling us the time for peace is now. He brought up such concepts as killing people for killing people, and governments waging wars to enforce peace. There are a multitude of ways we seem to think violence will end violence. I look back over the last few decades and it is astounding how often teachers and parents and authority figures think they can control others with threats and corporal punishment. Violent little boys grow up to be violent little men. Let's just stop it -- stop it now!
"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped! It is not the world that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what it is? The earth bows down before its gracious Presence, and it leans down in answer, to raise it up again. Now is the question different. It is no longer, 'Can peace be possible in this world?' but instead, 'Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?'"
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