Let there be peace on Earth

When a person gets a cut, whether or tiny or large, most of the time the healing process begins and the cut starts to mend and eventually goes away.  Whether or not it leaves a scar depends upon  the severity of the wound, and if there was some type of extenuating circumstance such as infection or aggravation of the wound.  This certainly doesn’t have to be a truly physical thing, it can be figurative

I say this because I feel there has been a lot of “cutting” going on in our country and in our world over the past few years and a lot of the wounds are still not healed, or are infected.  It’s bound to leave scars, even after the healing process is over.

I look back on a lot of things I have said and done over the years, and I see where I have “cut” people.  Sometimes small cuts, sometimes pretty deep.  I have done it for spite in some instances, and sometimes it has been purely accidental.  Nevertheless, it has been done and it has been me doing it.  I have not stopped and thought, at least with few exceptions about what I was doing or saying.  Many, many other people have been doing the same.  We use all sorts of sharp objects.  Politics, religion, culture, money….oh yes definitely money.  We cut, cut, and cut and in return we get cut.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Now,  it is nearly Christmas 2017, and I wonder how much longer the cycle of hurting each other can go on.  I realize it’s gone on since the dawn of time, but I wish for nothing so much as peace.  Yet I know it’s not forthcoming.

I listen closely inside my head, inside my heart, and I can hear the words of that song written in 1955 for a group of children to sing:

“let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me”

Who else could it begin with? None of us have control over the minds and hearts of others, though many think they do.  But, if peace is to be found it has to come from within our hearts and none else’s. Somebody has to start, somebody has to be the first to say that they will be at peace with any other human being, no matter what the circumstance.  No matter what the religion or culture, or color, or gender, or political party.  No matter what.

“let there be peace on earth, a peace that was meant to be……with God as our father, brothers all are we, let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony”

If one believes in a God, or a creator as our “father” then that must mean that we are all brothers or sisters of this earth, and we must believe that eventually peace was “meant to be”

The song goes on of course to build to the crescendo which repeats the opening line:

….let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me”.

There is power in peace if we can find it.  I hope that on this Christmas, as in none ever before, we look more deeply and more fervently for the solutions that will bring peace to our world.