Gardens not battlefields

“No-one will make them afraid” Micah 4:4

Every few weeks, a little group of us who work from home stop work for an hour, eat a bowl of soup and David Suchet obligingly comes to join us via the Bible app and reads us some Scripture. We listen to it a couple of times, pause, share our thoughts and pray. Today, we heard the prophet Micah’s prophecy of swords turning into gardening tools. What a thought – tanks turning into wheelbarrows, AK47 assault rifles into garden spades, soldiers into farmers.  The day is coming when everyone will sit peacefully in their gardens, and no-one will make them afraid.

Imagine that in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Yemen.

George Washington frequently quoted Micah’s prophecy. What would he have thought of today’s headlines? As we observe another Remembrance Sunday, the humanist illusion founders. According to the Wall Street Journal, close to a million have died in the Ukraine/Russia conflict.

Sometimes I can hardly bear to watch the news. How do we respond to a world echoing with the scared cries of children, soaked in the tears of mothers? How do we handle the fear that threatens when tensions grow in the Middle East and China looms over Taiwan?

Micah said, “No-one will make them afraid!”

What a promise - a day when there will be no fear.

We aren’t there yet, right now we are still in the place where our calling is to be peacemakers in a conflicted world, trusting that God himself is our place of no fear and that he loves us so much that he will bring us to place of no tears. That’s what gives us courage to work and pray for peace today.

This Remembrance Sunday, as we remember wars that were and are, let’s remember that God’s plan for us is not a battlefield but a garden.

Father, we cannot bear the weight of the pain and conflict of our world and so we bring it to you, praying that you will raise up peacemakers and that we will be peacemakers, who grow gardens that feed the hungry. In the name of your Son, our Prince of Peace, Amen