The Way of Peace
This December, members of the Juniper Formation Leadership Team are sharing daily reflections through the Daily Ripple app and Substack. Join us as we explore the Advent themes of hope, peace, love, and joy. This week’s reflections are written by Rev. Candace Woods.
Make Ready the Way
Luke 3:4 - “Make ready the way of our God; clear a straight path.”
Writing about peace in this moment in the world feels like an incomprehensible task. There’s so much happening around us that is earth-shattering, terror-inducing, and…just…so much. I know many of our personal lives feel similarly peace-less as we grapple with illness or breakups or family conflict or or or
Sigh.
Maybe that’s why we need to make ready the way for God. I think on individual levels, there’s work that we get to do in our own hearts and souls and minds to make way for God’s peace to come.
For me that means taking my meds, moving my body, putting down my phone as my anxiety wants me to unceasingly scroll. As I take action to make space for peace to become a reality in my spirit, I get the opportunity to co-create peace with God.
Think about your day today. How do you need to make way for God’s peace in your life? How do you get to own your role in co-creating space for peace to reside?
Little Nudges
Luke 1:59 - “Guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Sometimes we need little (or big) nudges to help us find our way to the path of peace. I was recently venting to a friend about an interpersonal conflict and she listened and validated my experiences and then gently checked me about the really severe actions that I had said I was going to take in this relationship.
I’m grateful for her helping me to find my way back onto the path of peace. Now, let’s be clear: sometimes severe actions are needed to protect our personal peace. But in some cases, I think we miss a lot of the peace that’s possible when we jump straight to cutting someone out of our lives. We miss the kind of peace that is rooted in right relationship that’s been through difficulties or finding peace within our own selves that doesn’t have to negate the experiences and dignity of another.
And what’s beautiful about living in community with others is that we get to assist each other in finding our way back to the way of peace when we get off track. We do this in community with ourselves, with our neighbors and chosen ones, with our institutions, and with our broader global community. We need one another to nudge our societies and ourselves into ways of living peaceably.
Who are the people in your life that you receive nudges of peace from? And where might you use your voice or elbow to nudge others onto the path?
Justice & Peace
Philippians 1:11 - “It’s my wish that you be found rich in the harvest of justice.”
We can’t talk about peace without talking about justice. My mind goes straight to the protest chant: “No Justice, No Peace.” And it’s true. We will not experience the kind of life-flourishing peace that is intended for us without justice that liberates the poor, cares for the sick, and makes right our relationships with one another and the earth. Dr. Cornel West says that “justice is what love looks like in public.”
Paul, the writer of Philippians, used this phrase as a kind of greeting to those to whom he was addressing. Like, “I hope this email finds you well.” I might start using “I hope that you’re found rich in the harvest of justice,” as my new email opener. Because it’s true. I hope that justice finds you.
I hope that the injustices that you are facing are made right, so that you may have peace. I hope that the injustices that we are experiencing collectively are turned right side up, so that we all can be at peace. I hope that we as humans find ways to take up our right-sized space on this planet and create justice and peace with the trees and animals and oceans. Only then will we have the big, universal, collective peace that we all seek.
What seed of justice do you feel called to plant today so that we might later be rich in the harvest?
Valleys & Hills
Baruch 5:6 - “For God has ordered that every high mountain and the ancient hills be made low and the valleys filled up.”
Luke 3:5 - “Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be leveled. The twisted paths will be made straight, and the rough road smooth.”
Today I’m thinking about the valleys and hills of the bar chart showing wealth inequality in the US and worldwide. I’m thinking about who has access to healthcare and who doesn’t. Who gets to breathe clean air and drink clean water and who doesn’t. Who gets to make decisions about their bodies and who doesn’t.
I think it’s both encouraging and disappointing that for millennia people have been observing and naming the mountains of the wealthy and the valleys of the workers. On the one hand, I feel solidarity with them, the ancestors of old, who have been trusting in God to bring equity and justice. On the other hand, I also feel disappointed that those visions have gone unrealized for so long.
But I’m not someone who believes that we just sit back and wait for the will of God to be done. I believe that we have a responsibility to act with one another and with God to bring about the visions of justice and peace that we’ve been longing for. And HOW we go about taking action is just as important as WHAT we do. How we live into the dream will shape what the dream can look like. As Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
What are the tools that you have to pull down the mountains and raise the valleys and build the world you wish to see?
Solidarity
Baruch 5:1 - “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.”
I dream of a day when the city of Jerusalem will be free from sorrow and affliction and at peace. I can’t write Daily Ripples for the Advent week of Peace and not talk about Palestine. I just can’t.
It was the movement for Palestinian liberation that began my deconstruction from evangelicalism and my movement towards a theological framework that was progressive. I was 20 and a missionary in an evangelical para-church organization and I met some Palestinians. I heard their stories. I learned about their histories. And I saw Jesus in their witness.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem (a town that still exists in the West Bank), under foreign occupation, was the subject of a genocidal hunt, lived a life that challenged the rule of empire, and was put to death by imperial forces.
Once I saw Jesus through that lens, I couldn’t not see him in solidarity with every person living under foreign occupation, experiencing genocide, challenging empire and being put to death for it.
Even though I have a degree in the history and politics of the Middle East and a graduate degree in social justice and ethics, I don’t know the exact specifics of how we get to that day when Jerusalem is robed in the beauty of the glory of God. But I do know, for damn sure, that it starts with ending the genocide in Palestine.
How will you follow Jesus’ lead to be in solidarity with those who challenge empire?