Christian Comment with Mike Holloway, Vicar of the Beacon Benefice

LAST week, a number of Churches have been sharing in the Week of Prayer for World Peace.

This is not just a Christian initiative but one which involves people of many faiths believing together that God’s way for this world is one of peace.

You may well be thinking that prayer for peace is something the world desperately needs right now and you’d be right.

Every day the news is full of conflict and bloodshed across many nations; and then violence flares up somewhere else where we’d forgotten there was still conflict.

It seems never ending.

But as we wish or pray or work for peace in our world, it’s worth asking ourselves exactly what we mean by peace.

Just because nobody’s actually killing anybody else, does that mean there’s peace? Just because there’s a ceasefire somewhere, does that mean there’s peace?

Of course it doesn’t; peace means a lot more than just an end to violence.

If peace is to mean something to people caught up in violence, they have to be sure the peace will last.

That means tackling the issues that led to violence in the first place.

In turn that means we have to wish, pray and work for justice in our world too.

Peace will only lead to people flourishing when it is coupled with justice.

So as well as wishing, praying and working for an end to violence, we have to wish, pray and work for an end to oppression, unjust laws and the unequal treatment of people too.

Without all this the seeds of future conflicts will still be lying in the soil waiting to germinate and bring havoc and death once more.

So let’s see if we can plant seeds of hope instead and make this International Prayer for Peace our own.

Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth.

Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust.

Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace.

Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.