Imagine Peace.  Anyone driving behind me receives this directive.  What happens after that is up to them, but at least I have planted the seed.  The other day a man stopped me in a grocery store parking lot and commented, “I can’t even begin to imagine peace.  For my whole life there has been a war going on somewhere.”

I had to agree with him.  Nations wage war or threaten war against each other.  Groups within nations engage in bitter conflict with weapons, words, or both.  When you consider all this, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine a world free from conflict.  It’s easy to become overwhelmed, particularly if we define peace as “world peace.”

As a child in my school choir, I sang “Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let It Begin with Me.”  It was a huge relief when I realized I was not single-handedly responsible for creating world peace.  My job was to live peacefully, moment by moment, with the rest of God’s children (still not an easy task but much more doable than stopping war all over the globe).  My twelve-year-old self could easily imagine that kind of peace.

And I can imagine it now.  I explained this to the man in the parking lot.  I said, “I’m going to keep trying.  It’s my job.”  He shook his head in what seemed like skepticism or disbelief, but he was smiling.  I choose to believe he will try too.

I hope you’ll join us.