Advent Week 2: Peace
FROM SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR (& OUR FOUNDER’S HUSBAND!), TIM ZIEGENHALS
This post is part of our four-part Advent series in 2022 on the themes of Hope, Peace, Joy & Love moving through the first 2 chapters of the Gospel of Luke. One post will be released each week through the season of Advent. We started this tradition last year & love hearing from a variety of voices in this season leading to Christmas! This 2nd reflection is focusing on peace & Luke 1:39-56.
When I was first asked to reflect on the theme of peace, linked with this text from Luke, I wasn’t too sure of the connection! Nowhere in the text can the word “peace” be found. But as I pondered, I thought: “Isn’t that just like peace…it’s so desirable, yet so elusive!” As I pondered further, I began to wonder if what was going on in Mary’s heart wasn’t a growing sense of peace, as she began to experience it. Dipping into last week’s text, I imagine Mary filled with anxiety, far from peace & “greatly troubled” as Luke describes it, as the angel Gabriel woke her up with news that didn’t seem so good at that early hour!
However, as Mary begins to take this news to heart, she becomes more at peace with it, ready to serve God however He calls. Her sense of peace continues to grow as she hurries to her relative Elizabeth’s house & is met there with the affirmation of the Spirit, speaking to Mary through Elizabeth. Finally, her peace reaches a confident peak as she bursts into song, celebrating the upheaval she perceives God will bring about as He remembers (acts on) his mercy & begins, through what He is doing in Mary, to bring to an end the spiritual, political, social, & economic chaos that has turned our world upside down.
The peace that God desires is not just an absence of conflict; it is shalom, a beautiful word that conveys harmony, flourishing, & wholeness. Shalom describes a realm in which everything works the way our Loving Creator has designed it to work. How we long, along with Mary, for that day! And how the season of advent highlights the tension we all feel between that promise of God, when all will be at peace, & the reality of our circumstances, when chaos appears to reign. The Prince of Peace has come, & yet?
This will be our first Christmas without my father, who died last June at the age of 93. When he was healthy, he spent a good bit of his ministry working for peace, & a good bit of his retirement participating in weekly peace vigils. So, I’d like to give him the opportunity to speak into our yearning for peace. The following are excerpts from a reflection he wrote for a peace vigil in 2004, entitled, “God Make the Storm Be Still.” He reflects on an episode during his time as a naval chaplain:
Dear Friends of Peace: My second day at sea found our ship in the grip of a hurricane. We were the USS Greenwich Bay—seaplane tender converted to a “good-will” ship—somewhere off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, steaming east for our ultimate destination, Bahrain Island in the Persian Gulf.
Utterly naïve, I had assumed that the further out to sea one traveled, the calmer the sea became. Foolish young man! Hurricane winds that day were like nothing I had experienced before or since. Mountainous waves lifted the bow of our 300 foot vessel straight up in the air, then plunged it down, down into swirling waters sending sheets of green foam over us from bow to stern.
A sickening shudder passed throughout the ship each time our twin screws were lifted from the water. Hour after hour we were tossed about, cork like, as Captain & crew struggled to keep us afloat. I confess I was frightened, & I was sick. Vomiting everything in my stomach, I suffered the dry heaves for six hours while laying strapped in my bunk. I prayed to die. But finally, as the sailors of Psalm 107 experienced, God made the storm be still & the waves of the sea were hushed (v. 28f).
The hurricane I experienced at sea long years ago is not an inappropriate metaphor for life as I experience it in today’s turbulent world. Tossed about by mountainous problems, dark forces beyond control, “my courage melts away; I am at my wits end” (vv. 26f).
Not unlike those sailors I find myself turning to the Lord in my trouble, praying God will bring this nation out from its distress, that God will make the storms of war be still & the waves of violence be hushed, that the peoples of this world will be brought to their desired haven, a new & lasting era of Peace. God, make the storm be still; fill our hearts with peace! Shalom for all.
As I think Jesus would have responded: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Blessed are those who, having entered into the family of God through the life, death, & resurrection of the child born of Mary, endeavor to live into the family likeness by pursuing harmony, flourishing, & wholeness in whatever situation they find themselves.
How might you be a lifeboat of God’s peace in the troubled waters of today’s turbulent world, while you anticipate the beauty & fullness of the lasting calm that awaits in God’s new creation?