When Peace Becomes War

The Psalms are haunting, beautiful, mournful, encouraging and honest.

In other words, they reflect the realities of life at any and every point of history.

My reading this morning came from Psalm 120, and verse 7 caused me to pause.

I am for peace; but when I speak they are for war. (120:7)

In the world of blogosphere rumbles and soundbite warfare the idea of speaking for peace and having that speech incite others to war makes sense.

It is quite possible to speak for something hopeful, good, beautiful and praiseworthy and have it set off a firestorm of anger and aggression.

You can speak of the Kingdom that cometh, and receive the response that there are no vacancies at this time.

You can speak of raising the dead and healing the lepers and then be served notice that such things are just not done between 8am-5pm or on weekends.

The Psalm is a song of “ascent” – a psalm that moves worshippers toward the temple, toward the place where God is and meets with His people, and therefore there is shedding of the everyday skin and movement toward hope and redemption.

Today, Paul says that we who follow Christ are that temple. He’s here. He’s present. (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19)

When we speak of peace, war results because when you talk of the true Kingdom it makes impostor kings break out in hives.

We need to assess our speech – are we speaking of the good, thorough, and unique peace of Jesus?

If so, it’s not out of the question to expect our songs of peace to draw out cries for war. This is how it is when Kingdoms collide.