War is eminent on many of our minds this Christmas. What do we long for in the dark days of faith when our hope falters? Ask a stranger at the grocery store or the park what they hope for and you’re likely to get something along the lines of “peace.”

One wonders if this answer isn’t all that different from the answer one of Mary or Joseph’s friends might have given in first century Palestine.

Why is this our cry? What is at the heart of our desire for peace? On Monday evening, Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission, spoke during the St. Nicholas M25i and ARDF event. He says

 “Over the years, I have sat with many very poor mothers and fathers as they have shared their stories of surviving genocide, slavery, murder, torture, humiliating rapes, and abuse. The pain they describe is unfathomable – and the mental temptation is to imagine that the people who endure it are somehow fundamentally different from me. Maybe, somehow, they just don’t feel things like I do. Maybe they expect less, care less, hope for less, want less or need less. But painfully, over time, I have seen that they are exactly like me.” 

Since the start of time, one of the deepest human longings has been to belong to someone, some place, some people, without the fear of that belonging being violently contested or stripped away. Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Their perfect “shalom” – their flourishing – was dependent on the fact that they belonged in harmony to God, to each other and to the Earth. There was no pain of separation or loss of that belonging until they sinned and their relationships to God, each other and the earth were fractured. 

The heart of today’s image and Scripture passage gets right at the human longing for peace. One day soon “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” and “the nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra.”

These things are not possible in the fractured world we inhabit. In this world, wolves devour lambs and cobras kill children. In this world, over 100 million people are forcibly-displaced worldwide by the deadly forces of violence and hatred. This world knows what is to have been battered and bruised by human selfishness.

What if followers of Christ flooded service and medical professions as their career choices (social workers, counselors, nurses, advocates, child welfare workers) and some law enforcement (victim advocates, juvenile justice personnel) to have eyes and ears to "see" vulnerable populations they work with (homeless, runaway, sexual abuse, foster care, schools, ER, community clinics, etc) and shielded them from being trafficked and having violence done to them, or becoming victims of "death by despair" in suicide, homicide, and overdose? And what if every Anglican parish came alongside to offer support and gospel light?

In the darkness of this world, let us hold out Advent Hope in anticipation of the peace that brings reconciliation, restoration, and resurrection life. We contend for a peaceable kingdom, one where death holds no sway.