Making Peace at Home
The hospital won’t tell you this. Neither will the pediatrician. And parenting books don’t warn you. Here’s all you need to know about raising multiple children: it requires a degree in conflict management. Or at least a certificate.
Take my home, for example. The front door is a portal into a tornado of Nerf guns, baseballs, and empty snack carton. We moved during January and some walls could already use a fresh coat of paint! It wouldn’t matter, though. In our last house, the freshly painted ceiling lasted a week before the pristine white acquired a grease blob from one of those sticky hands traded in for tickets at Chuck-E-Cheese. My house has constant chatter and an ongoing wrestling match that may never have a winner but daily has losers, as the cries down the stairwell prove.
My house is just one example of the conflict swirling around all the time. Everywhere I go, conflict looms. We’re one decision away from it at the office. One misspoken word away at church. One tweet away online. I wish I had the ease of John Lennon’s imagination, that peace is “easy if you try." But I don’t, and you probably don’t either.
Peacemaking isn’t an easy gig. But God has called believers to be people of peace, so we can’t ignore it.
DEFINING PEACE
Have you ever tried defining peacemaking? It’s not as easy as it seems. My attempts, especially early on to my children, were filled with negatives. “Don’t do this.” “Don’t do that.” Peace sounded like the absence of things. And that’s true, to a degree. Peace does mean the calming of relational storms. It means forgiving and moving on. It means forgoing retaliation and removing oneself from the fray. But it also requires positive action.
When Isaiah looked down the corridor of history to see what was coming, he said, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isa. 52:7, my emphasis).
In the midst of national conflict, Isaiah saw the end of it in the gospel’s publication. He saw the positive action of God swallowing up the negative action of his people. He saw not merely news of a cancellation or removal, sending Israel to its proverbial room, but news of justification and righteousness, a divine hug reconciling all things to himself.
God’s good news is the “gospel of peace” that Paul tells us to wear (Eph. 6:15). Paul’s Ephesian 6 metaphor is not a defensive strategy. It’s an offensive one. We are to put on God’s armor not to protect us from the world but to give us the tools by which we can push his kingdom forward. Of all the armor he gives, only the shield is to protect. The rest of the armor is for offense. So why do we hide so often? To be a peace maker means to be a warrior in Christ’s kingdom, suited in his armor, ready for every good deed, advancing into the conflict to pull things together.
When hell broke loose on earth, God moved in with holy action. When conflict arises, we need to step in. When it’s set loose in the home, we must do the same. And our children must learn to do so, too.
MAKING PEACE
Given our long history of sin, the bible shouldn’t reflect as positively as it does about God’s people. We have a glorious future because something happened two thousand years ago that changed the story. The Apostle Paul put it succinctly: Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross (Col. 1:20). While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). Facing cosmic conflict, God didn’t avoid it. He entered into the fray. He made peace.
In history’s most famous sermon, Jesus told his followers, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are sons of God” (Matt. 5:9). To be a son of God means to be like God, like Jesus. He is an intervening God, willing to get his hands dirty, to empty himself, to serve as a slave. The reigning one became the crucified one. Why? To make peace.
So making peace is a messy business. It is cross-shaped and soaked with blood. To follow Jesus into his peacemaking work is to follow a path that leads to the grave where we lay down our selfish desires for the good of God’s kingdom, too. We set aside what we want for what God wants. We make peace like he did.
Like Christ, we must endure—and teach others to endure—the cross of peace-making for the joy set before us. The joy won’t come in the moment. It lies on the other side. The happiness of the gospel came with the resurrection, three days later. It might take days for peace making to unravel the shrouds of conflict. Pride. Anger. Resentment. Jealousy. Frustration. All are bound strong.
Going to those places and slaying those dragons is no easy task. It takes faith, hope, and love. It requires endurance. It necessitates the Spirit breaking into our lives. No wonder to do so is to be a son of God.
BRINGING PEACE
The easy way out of conflict is to avoid it, to usher in silence, to put the kids in separate rooms. But that only shifts the conflict from external to internal. Yes, the fists stop flying, but our hearts don’t stop feeling. We take what is seen on the outside and hold it captive inside. Hiding conflict in the corners of our heart, burying it in the darkest places of our soul only ensures the conflict rages on, and, in fact, grows. Like sin, conflict dies in the light. It breathes it’s last when something brighter enters in, when it is brought before Christ’s blazing glory.
The #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements prove this point. Those who kept conflict under wraps failed not only to love and care for those abused but failed to bring peace as Christ brings it. Those responsible for shepherding failed to fight off the lion, opting to move the sheep to a different pasture instead. The external conflict may have ended in one field, but peace was not brought to the world.
“A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace,” James 3:18 says. The wisdom of God tells us to be active sowers. “The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing” (Proverbs 20:4). A farmer faces conflict every time he faces his field. To do nothing guarantees an empty harvest. Why do we think it’s any different in other matters? Diligent ones reap a full harvest.
The harvest of righteousness sown in peace is, like farming, an active duty. We may think we are bringing peace by not confronting conflict head on. But that is to let the weeds grow deeper roots. As Ray Ortlund has said in a sermon, “Just not building relationships of comfort and honesty and gentleness—not doing that is peace-depriving. We might have many ways of doing life that seem natural to us but in fact are forms of death.” Bringers of peace don’t neglect the field, they sow and reap.
The cries from my stairwell will never be silenced by sending the boys to their rooms. I must step in as Jesus taught me, making peace for his sake. Conflicts may loom large, but there is a king on a throne who can bind the strong man. We can trust him for a peaceful heart, for peaceful homes, and even for peace in the world.
David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.