Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Corrie ten Boom, who had every human reason to hold hatred after the horrors of Ravensbrück, described the moment she met one of her former guards after the war — a man who had treated the prisoners with cruelty. He extended his hand to her after she had spoken at a church meeting. 'I had to forgive him,' she wrote. 'Not because I felt like it — I didn't. But God's forgiveness is not conditioned on our feelings. I prayed: Jesus, I cannot forgive this man. Give me Your forgiveness.' She shook the hand. Something changed in her. 'The peacemaker,' she wrote, 'is not the one with no reason for war. She is the one who chooses peace despite every reason.'

The seventh Beatitude is the only one that says something about what others will call you: 'children of God.' The peacemaker is recognizably a family member of God — because God is the great Peacemaker, who reconciled a hostile world to Himself through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). To make peace is to participate in the divine vocation. This is active peace: 'making' suggests effort, initiative, cost. The peaceable person avoids conflict. The peacemaker enters it — to bring reconciliation where division exists. This is the most difficult and most Christlike of all the Beatitude postures. It was demonstrated fully on the cross.