Come, Peace
Amid the news of violence, the tolls of bomb and gun, the agony that cries out in witness of what’s done when princes play for prizes and lives are trinkets won, come, peace, and turn our eyes here to look on Christ the Son. We see no kingship in him; the rending of his flesh gives us a kinship with him— the dying know their death. O peace, come give us vision to see him gasp for breath and feel our lungs’ constriction, and know him in ourselves. In every rib protruding, in every splintered bone, in carelessness and cruelty, in his death is our own. Come, peace, and lead us to him whose suffering we have known, to look on him we’ve wounded and lay our weapons down. We carry in our bodies the dying of the Lord, all we, like lambs to slaughter whose blood shall yet be poured. Then come, O peace, disarm us; turn back the sharp-edged sword to plow our hearts to softness and sow your seeds once more.
