The risen Jesus gives you peace.

Rom 5: 1. Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Rom 14: 17. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Matt. 5: 9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Various words describe experiencing the joy of living in the Kingdom of the risen Lord. Life, forgiveness and reconciliation are only three of many words that begin to teach about the layer upon layer of the sum total of what happens when we enter into the resurrection life of Jesus.

But “peace” seems to summarise what is essential to sharing in the life of the risen Jesus. That is if we know that biblical peace is much more than the absence of war and enmity. When OT believers greeted each other with “shalom” that we translate as peace, it had a positive message of being whole, complete and content – as the faithful share in the wholeness and divine bliss that God also enjoys.

One can still see a small speck of Paradise if you take time to look for it. Looking at God’s footprint left in unspoiled nature gives a glimpse of the peace that God intended for us when he created the perfect garden, called planet earth, for us to live in. This is why I simply cannot stay away from the Knysna forest and unspoiled beaches of the southern Cape. And where the dust of commercialisation has not covered too much of this footprint, the beautiful Bushveld and its natural wealth of game and tranquillity also speaks about Paradise: completeness found in being in tune with God, with our garden home he gave us and with one another.

The prophets foretold that the Messiah would be a Prince of Peace and that his Kingdom would restore God’s initial intent for us to share in the peace that the human mind cannot comprehend, yet the human soul can experience in his presence.

But the majority of us cannot run away from the man-made rat race, the less than perfect urban concrete and steel cages we erected to facilitate our technology driven and money run lives. Would peace for us only be a dream and forever unfulfilled desire and need?
Well, we will perfectly and completely only return to God’s Peace Paradise when God’s dominion becomes perfect when the risen Christ returns.

But where we as his followers brings about justice and righteousness through proclaiming the Gospel, the footprint of God’s work will also become visible in our contentment within a restored relationship with Christ, with God, with our Christian family and our family at home.

When we live the peace with God that Jesus brought through his sacrifice and his triumph and his exultation, then we, God’s children, become God’s peace footprint in a warring, struggling, conniving society. The wholeness and completeness that the resurrected Christ brings to our lives and relationships with God, people and nature, is called being the salt of the earth, being the light of the world, yes, being the hope of the despondent!

Now we know why Jesus said: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matt 5:9)