In the last days
the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established
as chief among the mountains;
it will be raised above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths."
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lordfrom Jerusalem.
He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the Lord. (Isaiah 2:2-5)
This will never happen in our lifetime. It is for the Lord to accomplish.
A lot of the peace envoys quote this passage and see themselves as agents of the peace that comes by beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. They see their efforts as accomplishing this.
But we will never accomplish this. Only God will. there is nothing we can do to make this happen.
Yes, we can preach the kingdom of God, we can show people the grace of his mercy, we can talk about the greatness of the Lord – but we cannot make it happen, no matter how much we may want it.
And the actions of a few in having some leaders of countries sign some papers will not make it happen.
A UN official lately called on the world to quit being so materialistic and argumentative and said, in essence, “Why can’t we just get along?” the comment would almost have been funny in its naivete if not for the fact that the guy was so serious.
His idea? If we just quit wanting stuff and quit fighting, the world will be a paradise.
And he is right. It would be. But if it could have been, it would have been already.
It is in man’s nature to fight, to argue, to quarrel, to desire. That is his nature. We cannot overcome it. It is part of us. It showed itself first when Adam and Eve wanted some fruit so much that they fought against the will of God to get it.
From then on, it has been this way. and will be until God comes back. It is only he who can make things good. It is only the Mountain of the Lord, the House of the God of Jacob, that will do it.
He will judge, will settle, will teach. When his perfect comes, at his appearing, at his glory, at the end of all this that makes us so unhappy, then and only then will the weapons of war be laid down.
We can want it, but he will make it happen when he is ready.
Nothing wrong with trying to make peace. But we just have to remember that we cannot bring lasting peace. Only God in his time can.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.