Jesus is quoted as saying, ‘Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’ (Matthew 5:9) It can
sound like a platitude, an inspirational meme to keep scrolling past. But the word
translated ‘blessed’ might better be translated ‘happy,’ happy for what from
the outside—if you aren’t a peacemaker—seems like no good reason. How can you
be happy, in a conflict zone? And yet, children can be, at least some of the
time.
Don’t get me wrong. Children witness terrible things,
endure things beyond words, and such things can leave them damaged, to grow in
malformed ways. Nonetheless, children possess a certain resilience, can take
adults by the hand, and lead them where they need to go, stepping into the life
they must live, when everything in the adults wants to give up living. Children
have an ability to see good, however small, however fragile, an innate ability
to know happiness in the ordinary. Children of God, yet to grow old.
If a community ripped apart by violence is going to
forge itself into something else, something practical and constructive—if they
are to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks—then
it is their children who are going to inspire them. Those who will enjoy the
fruit of the ploughshare, the pruning-hook, will be the very ones for whom we
pick up our hammers. Might even be the ones to fetch our hammer and say, ‘Are
you just going to sit there? Here, take this. Start hammering out peace.’
The young are not simply the future, waiting their time, but have a
share in our present. Our imperfect, ordinary, wonderful present. If we can
learn from them, we might just be peacemakers. In time, we might become known
as children ourselves, children of God, where once we only saw divided children
of men.
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