Waiting For the God of Peace

Scripture — Romans 15:4-13 (NRSV)

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the ancestors and that the gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

“Therefore I will confess you among the gentiles
and sing praises to your name”;
and again he says,
“Rejoice, O gentiles, with his people”;
and again,
“Praise the Lord, all you gentiles,
and let all the peoples praise him”;
and again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse shall come,
the one who rises to rule the gentiles;
in him the gentiles shall hope.”

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Devotion

For this Advent devotional from Life for Leaders, we are assigned to a week and to a weekly theme, and this week’s theme, as you’ve probably already noted, is peace.

When I saw I had been assigned (for the second year in a row! Thanks, Holy Spirit. I think.) to a week centered around peace, I wondered what I would say. I’m not a natural optimist, nor am I a particularly peaceful person. The themes in Advent which I respond to the most are those of hope and longing; not the shiny tree and the golden presents and the parties overflowing with community (and extroverts), but the silence of a wayside chapel, dark except for a candle or two in front of the stained glass, where I can sit and contemplate the One Who Is to Come, who is also—unquestionably, it seems, as I look around at the world—the One Who Does Not Seem to be Here Yet.

And in all honesty, I thought, this passage is actually more about hope and longing than it is about peace. Paul tells his readers that they can gain greater hope by reading scriptures from the past—which he cites at length. Much of the passage consists of quotes from the Hebrew Bible, which would have been Paul’s scriptures, including 2 Samuel, Psalms, and Isaiah. He further explains that those Scriptures promise hope even for the Gentiles; some of his readers in the church at Rome were Gentiles, and Paul deals at length in Romans, including in verses 7-8 of this passage, with how they too have become part of that Old Testament promise.

Peace doesn’t show up until the last sentence, where Paul blesses his readers. He askes God, who is the God that inspired the hope they have been cultivating, to fill them with joy and peace and, for good measure, _more _hope as well as the power of the Holy Spirit.

I think one of the most important things about peace—and joy, too, for that matter—is revealed by that sentence. You can’t really create it yourself. You can only ask for it. You can long for it. You can cultivate the ground in which hope for it can grow. (You can do that any time, of course, but the church particularly asks us to remember to do it in Advent—and, God knows, the world needs it.) But when peace comes, it comes as a gift from God. It comes to the weary and the war-torn, to the hopeful and the expectant, to those who celebrate and those who mourn and those who sit in silence, watching one candle, reminding the weary worshipper that the One You Think is Not Here Yet is the One Who Has Been Here All Along.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Welcoming Builds Up the Community (Romans 14:19–15:33).