an insistent peace

Spiritual resource to share:  paz = peace

photo by Domingos Peixoto for Brazilian newspaper O Globo/Rio

Recently, my friend Amy posted on facebook the story of the drug wars going on in Rio and this picture. It brought me back to my short stay in Rio, where I was working with a team of others to distribute Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures more broadly in that area. One special late afternoon, a colleague and I walked Rio’s beaches, with the twinkliing lights of the favelas on one end and the luxury hotels on the other.  We were wrapped up talking about healing and peace in the Middle East. Now I find all those ideas for peace and healing equally relevant for Rio now.

Newspapers were all over this story. It was humbling and frightening to read of it. I felt small.  What can I possibly say to such a massive display of aggression, violence, danger and conflict?  How can I pray?

Then, quite simply, I was reminded and humbled that God is greater than all these things. 

People have responded to this chaotic mayhem with a simple word: Peace. The photo above reminded me of the childlike purity and permance of peace.

Peace is what will prevail. It always has and always will.
Life is insistent and will prevail.
Love is the cornerstone of all spiritual building and will prevail.
And in the midst of the deepest disorder, order will stand its ground and spread.

I am so grateful to Amy for bringing this to my attention, for those journalists letting the world know, for those whose vision for justice and peace emboldened and trumped parasitic greed and fear.  And I am grateful for all of us prayer warriors, who get to work affirming what is permanent, good and true in the glaring face of chaos. Effective prayer has as its foundation the law of God --the law of the Creator as defined in Science and Health:

CREATOR. Spirit; Mind; intelligence; the animating divine Principle of all that is real and good; self-existent Life, Truth, and Love; that which is perfect and eternal; the opposite of matter and evil, which have no Principle; God, who made all that was made and could not create an atom or an element the opposite of Himself.

Although there is great relief that this recent – and some say the worst  - battle has been won ( click here for today's news) the mission to break the grip of the drug gangs continues. So does our prayer.