Hope for Peace

The war started about a year before Benjamin Franklin was born in the British colonial city of Boston, Massachusetts. Through the fall of colonialism, the discovery of electricity, the rise of the US on the world scene, two world wars, the invention of the computer and the establishement of the internet the waring powers of Rote Island fought skirmishes small and large. Was there any hope for peace among the very divided people there?

Yesterday in the course of my work I was looking at a story about Bible translation work that the people of the combined 10,000 Rikou and Oe Pao people. These two groups are among many on Rote that have been at war of some level for an estimated 300 years.

Today, people from these two communities are working together to share the load of translating the New Testament into their language. The coming of faith in Christ didn’t end the war, but God’s love might just heal old wounds and demonstrate an amazing level of forgiveness over time.

I think about this today as I hear about more fighting in the Middle East, about peace talks in Uganda, about the harmony that new East Timorese leaders are tasked with pursuing and of old wounds now healing. There is no easy answer to any of these struggles for lasting love. Even God’s love requires deep sacrifice of our pride and a willingness to bear terrible insults. But there is hope - hope that peace can come if we want it and will sacrifice enough for it.