The Peace We Take Into the World

Advent is the perfect time to focus on taking peace out into the world.

As I’ve pondered the many different facets of peace this week, I’ve written about creating a peaceful existence within my home and creating more space for peace within my heart by cleaning up any negativity  I may be harboring. I’ve written about taking some of the chaos out of the Christmas season so that we can really appreciate its true meaning. I’ve also written about how it’s possible to have peace in a very turbulent world when we have Jesus.

Today I want to think about how we can carry peace out into the world around us. I think maybe the best place to start is at home with the people we live with, our families. How do we speak to each other on a daily basis? What is the tone? Is it peaceful? Is it kind? Is there a lot of yelling? Is there a lot of fighting? I believe God loves the family unit. I think He wants it to be peaceful and happy. That’s usually the best way to grow love.

Perhaps Advent is a good time to think about our words and actions towards our family members. Do they need any work? Do we need to work on controlling temper? Do we need to pray for more patience with one another? God will help us heal our families if they need healing. We simply need to pray about it. We need to ask. Strong families can do big things together.

Next, we can ask ourselves if we were to watch ourselves on video at the end of the day, would we be happy with what we see? How did we react when that guy cut us off in traffic? Did we get angry and surrender any peace we were carrying? How about when a coworker got on our nerves or said something rude? Did we spend the rest of the day fuming about it with plans of revenge?

Living in peace is a choice. We can make up our minds before we leave our homes for the day that we are going to live in peace. That means we make up our minds to forgive others and “let it go,” before they offend us. Decide ahead of time that whatever happens in traffic is nothing personal. It doesn’t have to effect our peace. We can decide ahead of time that  we will be the light of Jesus at work; therefore any negativity thrown our way rolls off. Yes, we can still have our feelings hurt, but we can decide ahead of time to forgive.

We can make the conscious choice that peace is more important than being right, that peace is more important than getting even, that peace is important. Then we stick by that decision and remain unruffled, by Satan’s arrows. Believe me, he delights in shooting them. He hates peace because Jesus loves it.

Advent is the perfect time to really think about and pray about peace and what part we can play in spreading it in our own little area of the world. After all, we are anxiously awaiting for the arrival of the “Prince of Peace.” I don’t know about you, but I’d like to try to make him proud. What do you think?

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂