“The peace of Christ be with you. And also with you.” On Sunday mornings in congregations across the country, hands are shaken, and the words of Christ’s peace are exchanged with one another. Yet what does it mean to pass the peace of Christ into a world that is often anxious?
World Community Day began in 1943 as a day for church women across denominations to study peace. After World War II, leaders of denominations felt that they should set aside a day for prayer and ecumenical study.
Just as one country became two with South Sudan’s independence in 2011, Nile Theological College, offering both Arabic and English curriculum tracks, also split into two campuses in two countries the same year.
Imagine being an observer of SINKEX 2016. A SINKEX is a Navy exercise in which a ship is deliberately sunk by being subjected to missiles and bombs until it slips beneath the waves to the bottom of the sea. SINKEX 2016 took place 117 nautical miles north of Guam on Sept. 13, 2016. The targeted ship sank after five hours and 22 missile hits. The vessel subjected to this tortuous end was the decommissioned USS Rentz.
Osama (last name withheld) is a licensed Palestinian tour guide. He recently stood with one of his tour groups in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron with his head bowed and his expression troubled as a group of Israeli Jewish tourists walked through. The last person in line was an Israeli guard carrying a machine gun. It is a traditional sign of respect for visitors of any faith to remove their shoes and for women to cover their heads. This group had done neither. “No respect,” he said quietly. “No respect.”
As Christians, this is the promise toward which we live, but it’s not just an eschatological hope. It’s God’s vision into which we are called to live daily, supported by our faith in the One who has given himself on our behalf. Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth and the life” — nothing less — and the guide for our daily living.
Each year, on a Sunday during Lent, Presbyterian churches across the denomination turn their attention to people and communities in need — and take a day to celebrate the mission and ministry of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People (SDOP). April 7 is Self-Development of People (SDOP) Sunday, an opportunity for congregations to focus on work to help disadvantaged people and low-income community groups.
Ask nearly anyone who has served in the military about their chaplain, and you will almost always hear a positive story.
Since before the founding of our nation chaplains have served alongside those who have sought to defend our country and the values we represent. Chaplains are agents of peace, always present in the most trying of times — available to all, no matter the circumstance or the person.
In 1993, during a study abroad program to Central America, I visited El Salvador, a small Central American nation that had recently signed peace accords after more than a decade of civil war. In a unique exchange with Salvadoran youth, during a Bible study on the beach, we privileged, and somewhat sheltered North American college students were interrogated about our countries’ policies and forced to reflect on our own complicity.
Miriam is a teacher at a public elementary school in her indigenous community in Guatemala. When the government funds for the school hadn’t come halfway through the school year (but had for all of the non-indigenous public schools in the area), she led a march of teachers from their small town in the mountains to the municipal building in Xela, six miles away. Outside the government building, indigenous teachers and parents held a rally and delivered a letter demanding the money allocated for their children’s education.
