Thought for the week: Advent 4 - Peace

An art competition was once held on the theme of ‘Peace’. Most artists used images of green fields with sheep grazing safely. There were streams and trees swaying gently in the breeze on a summer’s day. However, the winning painting showed a bird in a nest, protecting its young, in a tree that was swaying in a howling gale. Were we to enter this competition, what images would we produce?

Maybe we could come up with a sculpture like the ‘Throne of weapons’. This is a sculpture by Mozambican artist Cristavao Canhavato and is made from decommissioned guns. It was created in 2002 as part of the ‘Transforming Arms into Tools’ project, through which over 600,000 weapons, left in Mozambique after the civil war, were exchanged for tools and hardware. At the time the sculpture was said to ‘represent both the tragedy of war and the human triumph of those who achieved a lasting peace’.

Or what about the image suggested by Graham Kendrick’s song ‘Thorns in the straw’, which suggests that Mary may have seen, as she looks at her sleeping child, ‘by his head a thorn’. ‘And did she smell myrrh in the air on that starry night?’, the song continues. The baby lying peacefully in the manger, the one whose birth we will celebrate in just a few days’ time, the one who the angels said would bring ‘peace on earth’, was threatened right from the start. He brought peace, but at a cost.

Then there is the traditional symbol of peace, the dove. Surely this would suggest a placid creature, but you might see a slightly different picture if you were to see a collared dove, whose nest was being threatened by a magpie!

There is nothing ‘static’ or placid about Mary’s song. It is a song about righting wrongs, a peace that will come through justice, and action to achieve it. We need to find peace at times of turmoil and to be peacemakers to bring a peaceful space for others. Are there wrongs that we can right to bring peace?

So what will our pictures of peace look like? And will they change our lives?