September 21, 2024
The International Day of Peace is a day set aside originally by the United Nations. They hoped that by focusing our attention on peace on this day, we would have a yearly opportunity to stop and educate ourselves on issues of contemporary concern, to mobilize ourselves to address these domestic and global conflicts, and to memorialize and celebrate hard-won peaceable achievements. This is a timely reminder for us Presbyterians, one we would do well to take a minute to reflect on today.
When we think about the conflicts that occupy our headlines, we have the opportunity to educate ourselves about the reasons why peace is crushingly absent in places like Ukraine and Palestine today. The long history of Russian expansionism and Israeli settler-colonialism require serious attention. The Peacemaking Program regularly offers webinars and resources on topics like these.
But the International Day of Peace also provides opportunities for us to think deeply about peace itself and about how peace should be pursued in places where violence reigns. The U.N.’s reminder that peace involves mobilization suggests that peace-work does not entail our withdrawal from or avoidance of politics. Rather, peace is political. If it is going to be more than empty talk, peace must have political partisans. It is a political project we pursue together as partisans of a world where all are enabled to flourish. It is a project that invites us to concrete participation. Our Congress has not responded to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as partisans of peace. They seem to be weighing their options as between providing unbridled military aid to Ukraine and Israel or no support at all.
As partisans of peace, we Presbyterians have the opportunity to sow peace by rejecting this false binary. We can loudly and proactively champion nonviolent diplomacy, support humanitarian relief work, and push for negotiations that promise to ease conflicts and end cycles of violence. And as we do this work, it will help to remember those who have gone before us and found success. Seeking peace where there is no peace is difficult, complex and often dispiriting work. We will need the help and the wisdom of those who have won peace in the past in the face of steep odds. There are many Presbyterian saints we can turn to for inspiration. Remembering that peace is possible because it has been possible can sustain us in the journey.
Dr. Andrew J. Peterson, Associate for Peacemaking, Presbyterian Peacemaking Program
Daily Readings
Today’s Focus: International Day of Peace
Let us join in prayer for:
PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jeanie Schmuckie, Legal Assistant, Presbyterian Foundation
Rose Schoene, Client Service Specialist, Presbyterian Foundation
Let us pray
God of grace and Lord of peace, we turn again and again to our arms for security. In them, we find instead violence and deepening division and alienation from one another. Turns us instead toward you, toward the peace you promise and already are making ready for us here. Give us your grace so that we may see one another as your fellow children regardless of our differences. Send us your wisdom that we may risk the uncertainty of peace. And give us the strength to pray for our enemies as our friends, to wish them well, to hope to share with them in your beloved community, to do whatever we must to make this so. Amen.