Praying for Peace

It's a good season to pray for peace. Those of us who call ourselves Christian serve the one who came to bring peace. Heard recently on an NPR report that research shows that the percentage of life loss to war and violence is declining in the world -- even if media reports don't always reflect that. Our troops are coming home from Iraq. Let's pray Afghanistan is soon as well. And let's pray for those regions.

My son shared a Youtube link with me that I really enjoyed. Matisyahu is a Jewish reggae musician! Good message! Enjoy as you pray for peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRmBChQjZPs&ob=av2e

A Patient Advent

I am not by nature a patient person. And yet there it was in one of the lectionary passages this week (2 Peter 3:8-15a) -- God waits on judgement because God is patient and awaits the changing of human hearts. And those words in Peter are not written to the world at large, but to people in the church. God is slow in coming for judgment to give the readers of the letter a chance to repent.

So if God can be patient, I suspect God expects the same of me. God wants me to be patient with others who seem to make the same mistakes over and over (yea, I know, look in the mirror). God wants me to be patient with family, with friends, with the person driving too slow on the highway, with the tired clerk at the store, with the customer rep from the cable company, with the interruptions that delay the sermon being written.

It's very hard to do this time of year -- be patient -- and yet that is what God wants.