Peace

Peace Christmas card lo res copy

Peace; 2015; 4″ x 5″; lino-cut.

This cracking, bleeding orb hurtles through space, and I am only a tiny, imperceptible pinprick of yearning somewhere on its spinning surface.

I’ve never craved peace so urgently.

My own pulse of longing seems to merge with a collective sigh of all colors and creeds, like black exhaust fumes spurting from an ancient, lumbering, rusty vehicle. From the bullet-pocked streets of my own city, to blood-stained foreign lands, peace eludes like howling winter wind.

Today, I’m setting down the broken pieces of all this un-peace, these mangled moments I can no longer bear. I’m standing up straight and I’m setting out on a journey. I’m walking ’til I reach hulking hills on the edge of a town, until I creep to a stable where animals rustle and a newborn, wet and warm, invades this shattered world.

There, the hands that formed the universe fold and fit into the created. There, just-emerged flesh-and-blood tenderly mews: God is for us.

Even as brilliant creatures of light, buoyant in midnight air, burst into song like a frozen morning tossing off a white winter blanket, blinking, startled in inexplicable twinkling blue.

There, peace penetrates the last, longest steps from the wall of my chest to my fluttering heart and I know: all is well, and all shall be well.

I fall to my knees with shepherds and wise-men, paupers and kings.

I cry out as never before with the sum total of all my soul: Oh Prince of Peace, let your Kingdom reign, be born in me today!

Luke 2:14

At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God’s praises:
Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
Peace to all men and women on earth who please him.
(The Message version of the Bible)

12 thoughts on “Peace”

Leave a comment