Dec 6, 2007

Prayer for Peace



Dear Jesus,

As I think about you and all that you came to be it is hard for me to think of you as a tiny baby. To imagine you lying in a trough full of hay in the cold under the starlight. I ache knowing now what was going to come. You came to this broken world as the Prince of Peace.

No one was expecting you to come as you did except a few chosen youngsters who were most certainly expecting. Caught up in the miracle of your birth and dropped into the roles not only parents, husband and wife and adulthood. They knew nothing about you, their role in history, what it would mean to be a parent, or a full fledged adult. They possibly knew nothing of the world beyond their own town.

Their lives were never to be the same. Never again would they be innocent young children, instead they would have the most innocent child ever.

How overwhelmed they must have been. Apart from family, friends, home, about to have their first child. A child unlike any other before or since. The Son of God the Prince of Peace they had only ever been told of was about to become their full time responsibility.

A responsibility that did not come with a baby shower filled with words of wisdom or gifts to get them off on the right foot. Or even birthing classes. They were all on their own.

Mary not only had her world change, her body changed too. She went from girl to woman over night. She had to experience pain and suffering in order to bring you the Prince of Peace into this world.

What are you calling us to experience in order to join Mary in bringing you into the world we live in? Not just the news of you, but to bring your peace to a world that is still filled with sin and suffering a world that is lacking shalom. Am I willing to suffer great pain and alter my life drastically in order to bring your peace into my world? Put aside my comfort for your glory, your purpose?

Did Mary have any idea that your whole purpose in coming was to die in order to bring peace or was she expecting a warrior king, who would save her people and reign forever? This teenage girls pain lead to the birth of peace in our world and yet that was only the beginning. She had to let you leave home, wander the streets, be hated and eventually watched you sacrificed before her very eyes. All so that we might someday experience your perfect peace.

Did she want to give up? Did she have moments of doubt in God, in you, in her ability to suffer so much pain? How was she able to reconcile the death and suffering of her little prince? Even after your resurrection she had to let you go again to be with your Father in Heaven. How her heart must have ached for you, for peace.

How hard was it to leave your mom and dad, to travel and be hated, to make friends knowing you were going to have to leave them? How hard was it to love knowing you were going to have to leave behind so many saddened friends and family members? How hard was it to leave this world knowing that hundreds of years later there still would be be people hating you and your message? That there would still be no peace? Does your heart still break?

Lord Jesus Prince of Peace, restore your perfect peace this I pray. May we know the peace that can only come from you. Thank you for going through so much suffering to bring us peace that we do not deserve. Bring your wholeness, help me to administer your perfect peace to those around me. Fill me and this world with your peace this Christmas season.

Amen

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful post, Little Sister. Lots of good thinking in there.

You remind me of a guy I knew twenty some odd years ago who used to think 'real' thoughts like this. He was my High School youth pastor... you may know him.... ;)

Blessings on you!

Dan-o

quotes i love

  • "they will never care how much you know until they know how much you care."
  • "never be afraid to trust a well known God with an unknown future." - Corrie Ten Boom
  • "God doesn't need you, He loves you, that is much better."
  • "the world has yet to see what God can do through a man/woman who is totally commited to him." - D.L. Moody
  • "be who you is, cause if is ain't who you is, you is who you ain't."-
  • "some people say movies should be more like real life. I say real life should be more like the movies."