War or Peace?

Whoever of you loves life
   and desires to see many good days,
keep your tongue from evil
   and your lips from telling lies.
Turn from evil and do good;

   seek peace and pursue it. 

                      (Psalm 34:12-14 NIV)

I have been seeing and hearing a lot of fear and war mongering again coming through the various media outlets. Some of it makes me so ill I must either shut it off or block it. I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people desire to stir up strife rather than make peace. There are those who seem to strive to enter into war much more than they strive for peace and they absolutely will not support those who do desire peace. At least it appears so. Maybe they don't understand how damaging their disrespect toward others can actually be for the whole world. Maybe they don't care and that is their goal.

The Lord desires that we live reconciled to him and one another. Reconciled means living in peace. Yet, there are so many who prefer to bully and disrespect those who seek peace and pursue it. This is done with so much disrespect that it can do nothing but make more enemies. Do we really want to live the rest of our days at war with our neighbors; at war with other countries? 

This country, I have heard is the land of second chances. Well; if it is, then maybe we ought to quit digging up skeletons from the past unless maybe the purpose to dig them up is to forgive and move on. Holding these long held grudges does no one any good; not those we wish to disrespect and bring down and surely not ourselves.

It is time to forgive and be reconciled to God and our neighbors remembering that our neighbors are not just the people who live next door; but, all around the world. It would really be nice if everyone would support the efforts of those who are advancing peace and not war.

God's Peace - Pr. J

Leave Your Neighbor's Inheritance Alone

The Ninth Commandment.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.

What does this mean?--Answer.
We should fear and love God that we may not craftily seek to get our neighbor's inheritance or house, and obtain it by a show of [justice and] right, etc., but help and be of service to him in keeping it.

(http://bookofconcord.org/smallcatechism.php)

 

The ninth commandment goes hand in hand with the seventh: "You shall not steal." Leave your neighbor's property alone. Don't even think about it; unless you are thinking about ways to help him keep his property. Desiring what belongs to someone else can lead to all kinds of evil against him or her as our desires becomes obsessive thoughts and our obsessive thoughts turn to evils action to get what does not belong to us.

 

Hard work, perseverance, and education or other training will aid you in pursuit of what you might desire. Craftily attempting to obtain something from another who has worked for what they have will only bring trouble. What they have earned is theirs. What you have worked for and earned is yours.

 

The second table of the law is summed up like this: "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Matt 22:39; Mark 12:31) May God grant that our neighbors would love us enough to not craftily seek to obtain our inheritance or home even as we would not pursue obtaining theirs; but help them to keep it and be of service to them. 

 

God's Peace - Pr. J

Tossing Sea

"Peace, peace, to those far and near,”
    says the Lord. “And I will heal them.”
But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
    which cannot rest,
    whose waves cast up mire and mud.
“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”
                                                                         Isaiah 57:19-21

Always trying to stir up mud and mire; to create dirt and filth, there is no room for peace in the lives of those who plot evil.

Yet, for those who pursue peace; those who assist their neighbor in the pursuit of peace; they will live in peace. Those who seek to live reconciled to God and to one another will know the peace that only He can give no matter what storms the evil doers would create for them. They will know peace because God is with them.

May God grant you His peace.

Pr. J.