War and Peace

There is a time for everything... "a time for war and a time for peace" (Ecclesiastes 3:8).

I promise this blog will not be as long as the book by the same title!

To be honest, many people struggle with this part of the passage. We know the devastation of war. Most of us reading this blog don't necessarily know it firsthand, but we have seen the effects and have had our hearts broken by the images we see online or via television. War breaks families, spirits, countries and governments. How can The Teacher say there is a time for war?

I struggle with this passage myself. Jesus didn't say, "In me, you have war." He said, "In me, you may have peace" (John 16:33). We pray for peace and long for the day when God's kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven (cf. Matthew 6:10) because we know that will be a day of peace. A kingdom of peace (Romans 14:17). How can we justify a time for war?

Perhaps it's important to remember that peace, as the Bible understands it, is not just the absence of war or conflict. Certainly, that's part of it, but there are many people who do not know literal war who are not living in peace. Peace, or shalom as the Old Testament says, is a state where everything is not only right between people but also between people and God. Shalom is a contentedness, a world where God's will is done. Jewish folks still today use the word shalom as both a greeting and a farewell, a blessing and a prayer. Peace is more than just what happens after the weapons are laid down.

But to get to peace, we often have to struggle. There are issues in our lives that block our relationship with God. There are things we have done or continue to do that hinder the flow of God's grace into our days. There is struggle. There is conflict. There is war. More than just countries fighting countries, there is struggle that comes into each of our lives, battles we have to wage in order to get to the place of peace. Perhaps that's what The Teacher was thinking of as he wrote, because those times are important. They are not pleasant. They are not fun. But they are essential if we are going to be able to find true shalom.

There is a time for war and there is a time for peace. They are not of equal value and, by God's grace, they are not of equal length. But salvation comes after we have gone through the struggle, not when we have gone around it. The promised land is ours after we've gone through the wilderness and not evaded it. God is with us in the struggle and in the peace. Thanks be to God.