PEACE

 

"About fifty years ago, Mr. F.M. Bareham wrote the following:

 

A century ago men were following with bated breath the march of Napoleon and waiting with feverish impatience for news of the wars. And all the while in their homes babies were being born. But who could think about babies? Everybody was thinking about battles.

 

In one year between Trafalgar and Waterloo there stole into the world a host of heroes: Gladstone was born in Liverpool; Tennyson at the Somersby Rectory; and Oliver Wendell Holmes in Massachusetts. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and music was enriched by the advent of Felix Mendelssohn in Hamburg.

 

But nobody thought of babies, everybody was thinking of battles. Yet which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809? We fancy God can manage His world only with great battalions, when all the time he is doing it with beautiful babies.

 

When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants discovering, God sends a baby into the world to do it.”

 

-       Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle: pp 84, 85

We have fought many battles since 1809 and today, in 2025, we are still fighting and turmoil reigns supreme. We fight other nations, we fight our own countrymen, we fight our neighbours, we fight our families, we even fight ourselves. And there is one thing we seem to be overlooking, that God sent us a baby 2025 years ago to give us peace.

Every year we celebrate His birth but we do not celebrate Him. Some of us try hard to take Christ out of Christmas and focus on the tradition instead. Maybe animosity between nations and brotherhood of man will cease when instead of Christmas we start celebrating The Prince of Peace. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Emmanuel by June Jameson)