Living The Message Feb.2

Creative Action

God is engaged in worldwide disarmament. All the ways in which men and women attempt to forcibly impose their wills on neighbors and enemies are thrown into the trash heap. Violence does not work. It never has worked. It never will work. Weapons are not functional.

The history of violence is a history of failures. There has never been a won war. There has never been a victorious battle. The use of force destroys the ever reality that is exercised in its behalf, whether honor, truth or justice. living in the kind of world in which we do and being the sinners we are, we somtimes cannot avoid violence. But even when it is inevitable it is not right. God dos not engage in it.

A steady, sustained look at God's works sees that our grantic, foolish arms build-up (whether personal or national, whether psychological or material) is being sujected to systematic and determined disarmament. Violent action is the antithesis of creative action. When we no longer have the will or the patience to be creative, we attempt to express our will by coercion. The lazy and the immature account for the most of the violence in the world. But however prevalent violence is, the person at prayer sees that is not the way most of the world, the world of Gos'd action, works. But it takes energy and maturity to see it and to sustain the vision.

Attention, all! See the marvels of God's!
He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons of war across his knee.

PSALM 46:8-9