Sabbath Devotional :: The Master's Work of Peacemaking

Christ Praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, by Hermann Clementz.

As we put an action-packed 2017 behind us and prepare ourselves for the year ahead, I hope we can each take a few moments to think and evaluate how our work at MWEG has made us feel. It would certainly be very easy in this challenging year for us to feel any number of negative emotions about the current state of affairs in the world — stressed, depressed, panicked, angry, even despairing. But if those are the predominant feelings we experience in our efforts, we must renew our focus on the one who (we hope) is always guiding our efforts — the Prince of Peace.

Peacemaking has been our clarion call this year and it must continue to guide all of our efforts. We have spent the year exploring and practicing peacemaking that is proactive, courageous, unifying, loving, and faithful. In the process, our hearts have truly been knit together in love and sisterhood.

In conclusion, as we continue to apply the Principles of Peacemaking in all aspects of our work here, please consider these inspired words from Sister Chieko N. Okazaki from a speech to LDS attorneys and law students titled, Peacemaking: Our Essential Work in the Last Days.*

“My third point is that essential to peacemaking in these last days is the ability to love. I want to be very specific on this point; and even though I’ve already disclaimed any insider knowledge of your professional responsibilities and duties, I want to talk specifically about love in your professional setting. I’m talking about your relationships with your clients and, to a lesser extent, your staffs, your colleagues, opposing counsel, the judges, and courtroom staffs.

“Brothers and sisters, you must respect the office held by expert witnesses, the judges, the bailiffs, other officers of the court, and opposing counsel. You don’t have to respect the person who holds that office unless that person earns your respect by his or her behavior. You don’t have to trust that person, even though you must trust the system. You don’t have to like that person or choose to spend time voluntarily with him or her, but it is absolutely incumbent upon you as a Christian and Latter-day Saint to love that person.

“I know exactly how impossible that sounds — even how undesirable it sounds, but I mean exactly what I say. Jesus told His disciples, ‘A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you.’ (John 13:34) This isn’t a suggestion or a handy hint. It’s a commandment.

“It cuts through all of the relationships that require reciprocation. Respect requires reciprocation. Trust requires reciprocation. Courtesy doesn’t require reciprocation but it can only flourish when there is. Liking and friendship definitely require reciprocation.

“Jesus isn’t talking about any of those things. He’s talking about love — the kind of love that He had for us. And what kind of love was that? It was love that went to Gethsemane and to the cross. It was love that suffered from betrayal, abandonment, and torture but without withdrawing itself. It was love that persisted to the very uttermost. When humankind did its worst to Jesus, He did His uttermost for us. That’s why we worship and adore Him.

“Can we do the same thing? Not on our own. Not from our own resources. Not by our own kindly thought and self-discipline and willpower. Not without Him. When Jesus says, ‘I am the way,’ He means that literally. He not only imposes this impossible commandment on us of loving one another as He loves us, He not only insists that we take that commandment seriously, but He also foresees that we will fail and that our own pitifully small wells of charity can last no longer than an ice cube on the sidewalk at the 24th of July parade — that is, unless He helps us.

“He is the vine. We are the branches. As long as we are firmly connected to Him, then His own power, energy, passion, and compassion flow through to us from Him. We can’t do it without Him and, God be thanked, we don’t have to even try without Him. He is the living water, springing up everlastingly, if we will partake in obedience and faith.

…

“At times the darkness must seem strong. Be strong to combat it. Strengthen yourselves through prayer. Work for peace of conscience through absolute integrity and honesty. Establish peace in your own homes by building trust and respect and by loving self-sacrificing. Remember who you want to raise your children. And love. Seek the abundant, never-failing source of love in our Savior. Make kindness and love your pathway and the light by which you walk. Teilhard de Chardin, a French Catholic theologian, said: ‘Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity we shall harness the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, [we] will have discovered fire.’** I feel to bless us all in the words of the Apostle Paul to the Roman Saints:

“‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:35-39)

“I testify to you of that love; I know that we are surrounded by that love. May we be filled with that love and therefore be about the Master’s work of peacemaking in these last days.”

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*The quoted speech was presented at the J. Reuben Clark Law Society conference at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, on February 16, 2007 and published in the Fall 2007 issue of the Clark Memorandum available at https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1041&context=clarkmemorandum.

**As quoted in Editors of Conari Press, “Random Acts of Kindness”, (Berkeley, California: Conari Press, 1993), 53.