Alternatively titled-‘The Mathematics of Peace.’  

Math is an extremely complicated and broad subject dealing with many things, but most non-mathematicians interact with it in very simple ways.  You have a quantity, and you change it.  I have a quantity of 1 apple, and I add 1 apple to that other apple, and I now have 2 apples.  I’m tempted to go on, but I don’t have heart to subject you all to several paragraphs recapping math you probably already understand.

In relation to our daily lives, we use math pretty regularly, even if we aren’t aware of it.  Many mathematical functions are automatic in our brains, or we use approximation to answer the question we have, without having to fully complete the equation.  An example of this would be my drive through order.  I know that my desired meal will cost approximately $5, and since it was just pay day, I know that I have approximately $12 in the bank.  I could write out the equation and show my work to find out if I have enough, but I know that 12 is bigger than 5, and the specifics are not as important as the end goal, which is, of course, purchasing delicious Taco Bell breakfast burritos.  Now if I return the next morning to order again, I will likely be more cautious as I consider whether I can pay or not.

It is easy to think of money as the way we most often use math in our daily lives, but I think there are other areas that we use math just as often.  After I’ve gotten my Taco Bell for the morning, I fight through the traffic, and drive to work for the day.  I arrive at work, and then proceed to work for the day, then drive home.  Many people find that they would rather be at home than work, so why do people go anyways?  Well, they have simply done the math.  They know that even though they enjoy being at home more than being at work, in order to maintain their home, and have all the nice things like food and drinks that make home so nice, they must have money.  They know that getting money can be accomplished by going to work, so they calculate the amount of their distaste for work, against the amount of desire they have for the good things provided by money.  In the form of an equation, it would be “desire for money” minus “dislike of work”.  If desire for money is bigger than dislike of work, than the individual will go to work.

So as you can see, we use math all the time.  Especially when it comes to weighing our desires against their costs.

Things get interesting when we start to apply mathematical concepts to socio-political concepts like war and peace.  (Shout out to my homeboy Tolstoy!)

War is created by an imbalance in our perception of the justness of the world around us.  Perhaps the aggressor feels that they have earned more of the worlds resources than they have thus far acquired, and they calculate that they can get more of what they feel they deserve by forcibly taking it from those around them.  Or, perhaps a group with a certain ideology feels that they are being unfairly persecuted, and their only recourse is to fight to correct the equation.  Warring parties evaluate the cost of the war, against the perceived gain of winning the war.  There are millions of micro-calculations taking place throughout the conflict as well.  Leaders should be constantly evaluating whether they can win this battle with this number of forces while suffering this number of casualties.

To simplify it, we look to the old testament.  ‘An eye for an eye.’

We constantly seek at least that balance.  He who has wronged me should be wronged equally as much as I was wronged.  Many times we aim to hurt them more than they have hurt us, which is why the old testament specifically addresses the issue, telling us it is wrong to seek to do more harm than was done to us.

So we see the math of war in front of us.  If you extrapolate it out to its furthest reaches, and attempt to balance the equation with ‘an eye for an eye’ as the standard for the solution, we quickly discover that war will eventually destroy everything.  Each injury results in a ripple effect through generations, as children are left parentless, and seek to balance the equation by taking revenge.  There is no way to balance the equation, as each retaliation shifts the imbalance to the other side.  We are on a teeter-totter of violence, each side seeking to rise above the other.

Until, that is, we introduce peace as an operator in the equation.

Peace resets the balance.  It levels the teeter-totter.

In mathematical terms, peace is impossible, it is breaking the rules of the equation, because one side or the other (and often times both) have to let something go from the ledger of wrongs committed against them.  They have to choose to ignore the numbers.  Peace is a willful choice to reset the math.  Each side has to let something go, and agree to start over.

This is what has happened for millennia, we discover the equation to be too complicated, and we pursue peace to wipe the slates clean.  The equation is 1=1 again.

The world could certainly benefit from a re-balancing now.

Let us pray for peace.

Be sure to check out the other people on the journey with me at 254peace.org, or on our Facebook page.  There are some awesome people participating this year, and they all have something important to say.  

There is a song that I learned in Sunday school called ‘Peace Like a River’.  Unsurprisingly, it’s main lyrical thrust is “I’ve got peace like a river” and that lyric is repeated 6 times in the course on one verse.  It’s a bit repetitive, but obviously memorable, and easy for kids to learn and sing.

Rivers are the lifeblood of many people.  Settlers would seek out rivers to start settlements near, and build forts with names like Defiance or Wayne on the shores of them.  Even longer ago, the great cities of Egypt were built along the Nile.  People have been building near, and living by rivers for millennia.  Rivers bring life to those who live near it.  Crops and livestock can be watered by them, your family can drink from them, and you can travel upon the river quickly and with less effort than by foot.   One can see why one would equate a river with peace and security.

Fall foilage over the St. Joseph River in Fort Wayne.

The thing about rivers is that they don’t start out as rivers.  They start out as rain or snow, falling into a valley that gather together and begin to move downhill.  Or, as we know, some rivers start as a spring, seeping from the ground slowly but deliberately.  No river is born fully formed.

The Mississippi river doesn’t issue forth from the ground in one rushing torrent, neither does it fall from the heavens in a single tremendous downpour.  It is formed, one drop of water at a time, when 2 drops become one, when 100 drops become a trickle, when 10 trickles become a stream, and 10 streams become a creek.  A river is not one ‘water’, but many waters gathered together.  Peace is not one moment, but many moments, gathered together.

Peace does not fall from the heavens in one tremendous downpour, and does not spring forth from the ground fully formed.  Peace is the sum of many smaller peaces, perhaps arriving over a lifetime.   Yes, there are times where we experience a flood of peace, just as a real river does, but a flood is a passing thing, while a river endures beyond the downpour.
Collect each little moment of peace that strikes your life, let it mingle with the other moments until the swirl together into a river of peace that flows through your life, bringing life to all it touches, and bringing joy to those who set sail upon it.

Peace like a river, indeed!

Be sure to check out the other people on the journey with me at 254peace.org, or on our Facebook page.  There are some awesome people participating this year, and they all have something important to say.  

It’s all over the news, and it has been for months.  It has actually always been on the news, but in the last few months we have really seen an increase in the reporting of sexual harassment or assaults.  It seems that no one is immune from accusations and many people are admitting that they have in fact done the things they are accused of.

It’s terrible that so many allegations have surfaced, because I suspect that many of them are very true.  Others could be less clear cut than they are being presented, but the sad fact of the matter is that we have a problem.  We don’t know how to manage this very special interaction between 2 people in a way that is always safe and respectful for all parties.

Last night my fiance and I were eating dinner, and next to us a table full of men discussed a woman at work.  One of them had been assigned to ‘mentor’ her, and the rest of the table made sure to tell him that it could be best done by teaching her to get on her knees.  I can only hope that my soon-to-be wife never has coworkers like them.  I’m sick to my stomach thinking about it, imagining my best friend facing men like them.  How have we gotten to a place in our culture where this is openly discussed at dinner in public?

Wide swaths of our culture have accepted that pornography isn’t really that bad.  Our culture has accepted that flexibility in our interpretation of our sexual identity is more important than a strict interpretation of wrong and right.  We create apps to help us find our next sexual fix, and we indiscriminately take sexual gratification wherever we can find it.   Sex is our god and our goal.

I know that I’m scratching the surface of a very tender area in our cultural psyche, I know that one wrong word could label me intolerant or a bigot.  So I tell you these things with a confession that I was that man.  Perhaps not to the same extreme as those famous individuals who have famously misused people, but I have been a man of unclean hands and impure lips.  Does it matter to what extent or against whom I have transgressed?  Those people were still hurt by me, and I am filled with regret as I remember what I have done so selfishly.

This 25 days is to be spent focused on peace.

I can tell you that I have never once found it in seeking sexual gratification.

God sent his one and only son, and even though my sin was as red as crimson, I can be washed as white as snow.  I do not deserve this restoration, and I often struggle to believe it, but I can not deny the healing that is taking place in my life.  In the same way I have not found peace in pursuing some form of intimacy outside of marriage, I find that I do have peace as I wait.

I’m being slowly filled with peace, as I align my paths to those that God has set out for me.
Forsake sin.

Seek peace.

Be sure to check out the other people on the journey with me at 254peace.org, or on our Facebook page.  There are some awesome people participating this year, and they all have something important to say.  

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For whatever reason, the dove is an international symbol of peace, understood by many cultures.  Wikipedia has collected several theories about the origins of the symbolism, so go check it out if you happen to be interested.

I was looking at a stained glass window the other day, and it had several doves on it, and a depiction of Jesus, which is not uncommon for stained glass.  This particular depiction of Jesus was built!  He was much more trapezoidal than I remember other Jesus depictions being, but as I looked at the picture more closely, in addition to noticing Jesus’ physique,  I also noticed that Jesus was feeding the doves.

In a flash I saw the symbolism of the Prince of Peace feeding the representative of peace.  The dove was being fed by the only who could truly feed it.  From the hand of Jesus, peace is fed.

Let us not forget that Jesus came to bring peace between God and Man, and tasked us with sharing that same peace with others.  He feeds us from his hand, so that we can be representatives of that peace, to those who are without hope.

Perhaps if we truly hunger for peace, we will be fed from the hand of God.

Be sure to check out the other people on the journey with me at 254peace.org, or on our Facebook page.  There are some awesome people participating this year, and they all have something important to say.  

This has been a crazy year in my life, and there have been a lot of changes.  I’ve chosen many of the changes, but it is pretty easy to choose something when you don’t totally understand all of the implications of your choice.  Many of these choices have impacted the peacefulness of my life significantly.

The biggest choice I’ve made was proposing to my girlfriend.  I am quite happy to say that she said yes, and we are working towards a May wedding, but it has certainly been an opportunity to stretch my peace keeping abilities.  Don’t misunderstand, we get along quite well, but as big decisions need to be made, we find that we are not always on the same page.

One of our first almost conflicts was when we discovered that while I would happily go to Mars as part of a colonization mission if I was given the chance, she would not!  (I even told her we could be the parents of the first martian, she was unresponsive.  I’m still confused why she would want to pass up this opportunity.)  I then offered what I thought was a wise compromise.  I offered to go without her, but told her I would be back in 5 or 6 years.  I was just as shocked to discover that this also wasn’t an acceptable course of action.  While it wasn’t the most serious discussion we have had in our preparations to get married, it was an eye opener for both of us.  We were different people, with different desires.

I’m sure you married folks could teach me a lot about peace.

One of the things that Sam and I enjoy doing on occasion is canoeing.  It can be a calm and peaceful experience to share as you float down the river, enjoying the surrounding scenery.  Or, it can be an exercise in total frustration as two very different people are put in the same boat, and both try to pursue their own plans.  Through our canoeing, I’ve discovered that Sam is a stop and smell the roses kind of girl as we stopped to look at a colony of snails that was floating in the narrow channel we were traveling down.   I’m more of an A to B person, the destination is as much the goal as the journey itself.  I like to cover as much ground as I can so I don’t miss anything!

It was also during our canoe trips that I discovered that Sam doesn’t automatically know what I am thinking.  I’ll dig my paddle deeply into the water to pull us over to the side or turn us around, and discover that she has dug her paddle in deeply to counteract my action.  It took me verbalizing my desire to for her to understand it and help me steer the canoe the direction I was hoping to go.  I’m sure she had many similar moments as I would not understand her direction, and just be paddling along blissfully unaware of her desires.  I’ve had to learn to communicate more than I ever have before.  I’m terrible at communicating, but I’m working on growing in that area.

So, canoeing can be a bit frustrating, but when you’re communicating well, and you are both pursuing the same goals, the end result is incredible.   Sam and I even conquered some unexpected rapids at the end of our last trip, and knowing that even though we were both afraid, and neither of us totally in control of the canoe by ourselves, we were able to overcome the fast moving water together, has helped me grow in my relationship with her.

Peace in your relationships requires communication.

Peace in your relationships also requires sacrifice.  I made the choice on both trips to sit in the front.  In the front of the canoe, it is much harder to steer, and you are putting yourself in the hands of the person in the back steering.  It was hard for me to make my male dominance submit to being out of control of my own destiny, but as I’ve done it, I’ve learned to trust Sam more than I would have otherwise.  I can find peace in knowing that Sam and I can trust each other to take care of one another.

Now, in just 50-70 years (The Lord willing of course) I’ll be able to look back and tell you so much more about how being married is the ultimate exercise in seeking peace.  Will you pray for both of us?  I’m sure we will need it.

Be sure to check out the other people on the journey with me at 254peace.org, or on our Facebook page.  There are some awesome people participating this year, and they all have something important to say.