Patterns for PeaceНамуна

Blessed Are The Peacemakers


In Matthew 5 Jesus gives one of His most famous sermons called the Sermon on the Mount. You’ve probably heard of it before. It’s filled with some of Jesus’ best-known teachings like the Lord’s Prayer.

At this point in time, it’s early on in Jesus’s ministry and just prior to this He’s been preaching all over Galilee and great crowds have started to follow Him. So when Jesus sees the multitudes of people gathering around Him, He goes up onto a mountain with His disciples and begins to speak to them.

It’s within this sermon that Jesus issues both a challenge and a promise in one powerful phrase. He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers because they will be called the children of God.” Think about the audacity of this statement for a moment. In a world that is often filled with strife, conflict, and hostility; Jesus sends us out as peacemakers. 

Now, what does this mean? Jesus doesn’t go into any details, but He does tell us what will happen when we live this out. That this is when we discover who we really are and our place in God’s family.

When we think about people who have embodied this ideal of a peacemaker, one of the people that might come to mind is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many know Dr. King as one of the most visible spokespersons of the civil rights movement, but he was also a Baptist minister whose Christian beliefs stirred him to speak up for the disadvantaged, the oppressed and other victims of injustice. Even though his words were often strong, they were always marked by peace.

To learn how to be a peacemaker involves more than just an explanation, it requires exposure. Each day of this devotional plan includes video footage from the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to give you a glimpse into some of his practical ways to live out peacemaking.

Questions for reflection.

What do you think it means to be a peacemaker?

Who do you think of when you hear the word peacemaker?