"Bringing Peace to Our World"

Pastor Laura Guy

November 30, 2008

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We wondered how Jesus can be called the Prince of Peace when there is still so much violence in the world. Even Jesus himself was threatened with violence as an infant.
We remembered that God created the world as a peace-filled place. God wanted us to live in pure relationship with Him - intimate, transparent, available. But God also gave us the choice to choose something else - the tree that would allow us to be our own gods. And that's what we chose. Since then, we have been trying to prove that we are the most powerful of all the little gods by waging wars against one another. This is not what God wanted for us.
We realized that God sent Jesus to be the true God, the true ruler of the earth. But we live in the now and the not yet. Jesus has come, and we can experience his peace in our lives now, but he has not yet returned to restore all of Creation to what God planned it to be. We saw how Isaiah described this new peaceful planet in Isaiah 11:1-10.
We heard the story of Sadako Sasaki, the Japanese girl who died as a result of leukemia she developed after the bombing of Hiroshima. Sadako heard a legend that if you folded 1,000 origami cranes, you would be granted a wish. She began folding cranes, but died soon after. Her friends and family raised money for a memorial to Sadako and all the children who have been hurt in wars. The 1,000 cranes are now a recognized symbol of peace. As Christians, we are folding 1,000 cranes as prayers for peace, while we wait for Jesus to restore all of Creation to a peace-filled planet.
We prayed that God would help us to bring peace on earth.
We celebrated communion at the table that makes us brothers and sisters with people from all over the world.