peace

Advent 12 - peace

Back in the decade or so that I sang with a quartet, my favorite song may have been a number called "In the Holy Mountain of the Lord," based on Isaiah 11. It was a great arrangement, with gorgeous harmonies and those wonderful words describing a world at peace:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra's den,
the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9)

Someday the Republicans will sit with the Democrats, and liberals and conservatives won't have anything more to fight about. Jews and Arabs and Americans will see our similarities and ignore our differences. Border security won't be a thing anymore, because no one will want to hurt anyone else, and with plenty for all and no hoarding, there will be no homeless or displaced people. On that day, if I cared about Facebook at all, I could scroll through without seeing a single snarky meme (yeah, I know, they're so good when they zing those other stupid people.)

Peace. It probably won't appeal to people who dream of being that good guy with a gun who gets to shoot a terrorist, but it sure sounds good to me. And it's why we wait for Jesus.