Peacemakers Shall Be Called Sons of God:
Frederick Buechner tells about watching a scene in the Ken Burns film series on the Civil War. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, and veterans from North and South gathered at the battleground to reminisce. At one point, the veterans decided to reenact Pickett's Charge. All the participants took their positions, and then one side began to charge the other. Instead of swords and rifles, this time the vets carried canes and crutches. As both sides converged, the old men did not fight. Instead they embraced and began to weep.
Buechner muses, "If only those doddering old veterans had seen in 1863 what they now saw so clearly fifty years later." Then he adds:
Half a century later, they saw that the great battle had been a great madness. The men who were advancing toward them across the field of Gettysburg were not enemies. They were human beings like themselves, with the same dreams, needs, hopes, the same wives and children waiting for them to come home ... What they saw was that we were, all of us, created not to do battle with each other but to love each other, and it was not just a truth they saw. For a few minutes, it was a truth they lived. It was a truth they became.
Ultimately, no one can make peace. Peace is a gift from God. Jesus said, “My peace I give you.” Peace, the peace of God, according to the scripture is beyond understanding. If we can bring Jesus to people, to ourselves, and bring them to Him, then we will have peace and we will in some sense make it, and though we may not understand it, we may experience it, and in that, become the sons of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus.