Seek Peace and Pursue It

Seek Peace and Pursue It

Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison and emerged not with revenge but with the willingness to build a new nation alongside his former captors. He described his decision: 'If I carried bitterness out of prison, I would be handing them the victory. I had work to do. Peace requires more work than war.' The Truth and Reconciliation Commission he helped establish became a model for post-conflict societies globally. Not everyone found reconciliation. But the architecture of peace-seeking he embodied prevented a civil war that many predicted was inevitable. Peace, Mandela demonstrated, must be actively sought and actively pursued — it does not appear on its own.

Psalm 34:14 is a couplet: turn from evil, do good. And then: seek peace, pursue it. The verbs escalate in intensity — seek implies an active looking, pursue implies a chase. Peace is pictured as something that requires hunting. This is the exact opposite of the common assumption that peace means the absence of conflict and therefore requires only inaction (stop fighting, peace will come). Genuine peace — shalom — is wholeness, flourishing, right relationship between people and with God. It doesn't arrive on its own; it must be created, maintained, and actively pursued even when it is costly. What peace are you being called to pursue today — in a relationship, a community, a situation? Stop waiting for it to appear. Pursue it.