Everyday Prayers for PeaceSample

Bring the Peace

When I’m on a plane ride, I like to sit in the aisle. I know that’s weird, but I truly would rather not sit near the window if I can help it because I deal with motion sickness. Yes, the view from the window seat is spectacular, but you can’t really enjoy it if your depth perception and churning stomach are threatening to make everyone around you miserable.

I’ve never actually lost my lunch on an airplane, but I’ve come pretty close a few times. It’s the going up and the coming down that really get me. On one particular trip, heading to a speaking engagement at a women’s event, I found myself not only fighting my usual motion sickness but a sickness of the heart as well. I was nervous. Fearful. I wasn’t a seasoned speaker, and I had left behind a bit of chaos for my husband to deal with. Not only that, but someone I cared about had recently questioned my motives for speaking and writing. I was shaken. Ironically—or perhaps not—as the plane ascended into the sky, a song I had forgotten I had downloaded came on. It’s a song by Jason Gray called “With Every Act of Love.” The lyrics that caught my attention that day simply said, “With every act of love we bring the kingdom come.”

As believers in Jesus, we have the kingdom of God at work in us and through us…the Christ Himself, through the Holy Spirit, walking with us. With those lyrics ringing in my ears, I realized that I literally carried Jesus with me into every situation I encountered. Because of that, I had the ability to touch other people’s lives with the kingdom through my own displays of love and kindness.

In the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, Jesus is teaching people what the kingdom of God actually looks like as it’s lived out. Ironically, it doesn’t look anything like they thought it would. Jesus gave the title “Blessed” to all kinds of things we wouldn’t normally think of as blessed—things like being poor in spirit, meek, mourning, and hungering after righteousness. And He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Let us pray to our Father that we choose to bring His peace into every situation we encounter.