PEACE

I am not too excited about talking tomorrow at church.  It is the 3rd Sunday of Advent and my talk was to be on PEACE as we lit the peace candle.  I feel much too lugubrious to speak peace in the midst of tragedy.  I had to discard my entire sermon I worked so hard on all week and rewrote something this morning to try and make sense out of senselessness.  20 little children dead...My God what have we done?

Here is an excerpt from tomorrow's talk on 'GOD WITH US-PEACE':
We decry the tragedies but in the same breath we reject the One who came to lead us out of this miasma of the human dilemma.

What we must not say, and we must not surrender to is the idea that the terrible manifestation of evil breaking into our celebration gives the lie to the PEACE we celebrate in the person of Jesus.

To paraphrase Lewis in the Great Divorce, we must not let Hell blackmail Heaven.
That until there is the absence of pain, no one else should taste joy.
That theirs should be the final power;
That Hell should be able to veto Heaven.

We saw evil for what it is.  The characteristic of one consumed by evil is "their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves." (Lewis)

And another excerpt:
And you may object here if you so desire...but there is within each of us something growing which will itself, if allowed to grow unabated, unchecked, mature into Hell itself unless it is stopped immediately.  (I think I may be borrowing from Lewis or Milton or McDonald---but the idea came from outside me.)

We look out over the misery of the human situation and what we have done and how we have handled the beautiful chance at life and we realize this is serious business.
This is why HE CAME.
We must put ourselves in His hands this moment, this hour, this very day.

So He came to give HIS PEACE.  And there will be a day when you wake to find that you grasped it and held onto Him, OR that frightening realization that HE was right there for your choosing, within your reach, and you have lost Him forever.

-Brian