{"id":93,"date":"2012-11-26T21:01:53","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T02:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=93"},"modified":"2021-04-19T16:01:07","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T20:01:07","slug":"let-peace-begin-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/let-peace-begin-with-me\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLet Peace Begin With Me\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let there be peace on earth\u2014and let it begin with me. I attended a Unity church service yesterday, where we closed the service by standing in a circle holding hands and singing that song. I\u2019d like to close\u2014or maybe open\u2014every Peacemaker seminar with that. We all decry the lack of \u201cpeace on earth\u201d but we blame it on others. It\u2019s so obvious how other<\/em> people are preventing peace on earth. But Jesus called us hypocrites for spotlighting others\u2019 faults while neglecting our own. This song reminds us to \u201cbegin with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author of those lyrics, Jill Jackson Miller, had a troubled childhood after her mother died when she was 3, moving from one foster home to another, and never felt loved. After her husband divorced her, she tried to commit suicide, but when she didn’t succeed, she says, \u201cI knew for the first time unconditional love–which God is. God is unconditional love. You are totally loved, totally accepted, just the way you are. In that moment I was not allowed to die, and something happened to me which is very difficult to explain. I had an eternal moment of truth, in which I knew I was loved, and knew I was here for a purpose.” Jill and her second husband, Sy Miller, wrote this song in 1955 after being inspired by a message that peace, to become a manifest reality, must be in the heart of each individual.<\/p>\n

As we enter the Christmas season, we will hear many songs, and send many cards, that speak of \u201cpeace on earth.\u201d I want to silently add, \u201cand let it begin with me.\u201d Even though I teach peacemaking\u2014or perhaps because<\/em> I teach peacemaking\u2014I keep encountering situations where I choose whether to \u201clet peace begin with me,\u201d by taking responsibility for my wrongdoing, by overlooking minor offenses, by reaching out in love. Ken Sande\u2019s book, The Peacemaker<\/em>, is all about how to \u201clet peace begin with me,\u201d and each time I teach its principles, I\u2019m reminded of my obligation to be a peacemaker–and of how difficult that is,\u00a0apart from the power of Christ at work within me.<\/p>\n

May we all focus on our own responsibility to \u201clet there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let there be peace on earth\u2014and let it begin with me. I attended a Unity church service yesterday, where we closed the service by standing in a circle holding hands and singing that song. I\u2019d like to close\u2014or maybe open\u2014every Peacemaker seminar with that. We all decry the lack of \u201cpeace on earth\u201d but we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}