Sermon quotes on peace
Wendell Berry
If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.
Ruth Haley Barton
One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace that passes understanding and rest ourselves there.
Taken from Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God by Ruth Haley Barton Copyright (c) 2018 by Ruth Haley Barton. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
If every man and woman in the world knew what it was to hunger and thirst after righteousness, there would be no danger of war.
Andrew Murray
Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.
John Owen
We cannot enjoy peace in this world unless we are ready to yield to the will of God in respect of death. Our times are in His hand, at His sovereign disposal. We must accept that as best.
Andy Stanley
Peace is a fruit of the Spirit, not a byproduct of accumulated wealth.
Ambrose of Milan
Begin the work of peace in yourself, so that once you are at peace yourself, you can bring peace to others.
Henri Nouwen
The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it.
Timothy Keller
The world’s peace is an intermittent peace, and Christian peace is constant, because the world’s peace is based on circumstances.
The Two Advocates (Encounters with Jesus Series Book 7) Penguin Publishing Group
Dorothy Day
An individual can march for peace or vote for peace and can have, perhaps, some small influence on global concerns. But the same individual is a giant in the eyes of a child at home. If peace is to be built, it must start with the individual. It is built brick by brick.
Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
A brother asked Poemen, ‘What am I to do, for I become weak just by sitting in my cell?’ He said, ‘Despise no one, condemn no one, revile no one: and God will give you quiteness, and you will sit at peace in your cell.’
John Piper
God is a peace-loving God and a peacemaking God. The whole history of redemption, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus, is God’s strategy to bring about a just and lasting peace between rebel man and Himself, and then between man and man. Therefore, God’s children are that way, too. They have the character of their Father. What he loves, they love. What he pursues, they pursue. You can know his children by whether they are willing to make sacrifices for peace the way God did.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
In shalom, each person enjoys justice, enjoys his or her rights. There is no shalom without justice. But shalom goes beyond justice. Shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relationships.
Cornelius Plantinga Jr
The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight. . . . Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.
Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, Eerdmans.
D.A. Carson
Jesus does not limit the peacemaking to only one kind, and neither will his disciples. In the light of the gospel, Jesus himself is the supreme peacemaker, making peace between God and man, and man and man. Our peacemaking will include the promulgation of that gospel. It must also extend to seeking all kinds of reconciliation. Instead of delighting in division, bitterness, strife, or some petty “divide and conquer” mentality, disciples of Jesus delight to make peace wherever possible.
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)
“But how am I to know the good side from the bad?” he asked, puzzled. “You will know,” Yoda answered. “When you are at peace . . . calm, passive.”
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Rick Love
Jesus’ brand of peacemaking is extensive. It embraces the breadth of humanity. But peacemaking is also intensive. The commands to love and pursue peace challenge us not only to resolve conflict but also to build accord, to humbly seek to rebuild trust and to make love deposits (or relational investments). To pursue peace is to work for in-depth harmony in the relationship.
Taken from Peace Catalysts: Resolving Conflict in Our Families, Organizations, and Communities by Rick Love, Copyright (c) 2014 p.55 by Rick Love. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Rick Love
A positive theology of peace is not simply reactive, but proactive. It takes initiatives. It creates peace. It sees peace not as something to be achieved merely by refraining from war, but by taking peacemaking initiatives. Peace, like war, must be waged. It must be waged courageously, persistently, creatively, with imagination, heart, and wisdom.
Taken from Peace Catalysts: Resolving Conflict in Our Families, Organizations, and Communities by Rick Love Copyright (c) 2014 p.61 by Rick Love. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Joshua Choonmin Kang
Humility brings peace, for when we reach the low place, we needn’t worry about falling down anymore.
John Ortberg
Peace doesn’t come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in the boat.
The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010).
Francis de Sales
The same everlasting Father who cares for you today will care for you tomorrow and every day. Either he will shield you from suffering or give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginings.
Dwight L. Moody
A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it.
Thomas Merton (Attributed)
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
Meister Eckhart
As thou art in church or cell, that same frame of mind carry out into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness.
Dorothy Day
Paper work, cleaning the house, dealing with the innumerable visitors who come all through the day, answering the phone, keeping patience and acting intelligently, which is to find some meaning in all that happens these things, too, are the works of peace, and often seem like a very little way.
“On Pilgrimage,” The Catholic Worker (December 1965
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
New Collected Poems ,Counterpoint Press, 2012, p.79.
Shane Claiborne
Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is a deliberate act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight, but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.
Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Zondervan, 2010).
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on Peace.