He shall judge between many peoples
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid,
for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. – Micah 4:3-4
Pollen is in the air, the temperatures are getting warmer; it is the time of the year for working in the yard. Many people take joy in working in their yards. That joy has a number of reasons behind it, I would venture. Part of it is the relaxing feeling of having a clear task to focus on. Another part of it is the pleasure of nurturing life in a direct way that literally gets your hands dirty with it. Biblically, there is a sense that the urge to tend the land and nurture gardens is central to who God created us to be. We are living out the true identity that God gave us when we build up life and care for the land around us.
Unfortunately, too often we get caught in the destructive tendencies that are the ways of the world. We act in ways that tear down life. The ways of the world nudge us, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly, towards its violence and anger. More than that, we can see the levels of anger, hatred, and violence that blossom around us too easily. We are inundated by news of shootings, senseless extinguishing of life, and consuming hatred day after day. It can be overwhelming to know that each day brings the possibility of yet another set of names of victims and visions of mourning amidst more tragedy. It rends our hearts because this is not God’s intention for us or for this world.
God calls us to be people of life, and to do that means to be people of peace. We are to be filled with Christ’s peace, but also to witness the reality of that peace that God brings. Even further, we are to put our hope in the promise that, even though our world seems deeply and hopelessly mired in violence, God will bring about peace in this world. Such peace begins in us and moves into the world through us.
Perhaps you have seen or heard about ministries that take old guns and rebuild them into garden tools. This brings the words recorded in Micah above (and also in Isaiah 2:4) into our world. Even in the time of the prophets, people were weary of the war-like ways of the world and needed to hear the promise of coming peace. This promise could spur them into action to witness
to the reality of God’s peace. Now, these centuries later, we continue to trust in God’s peace that is on the way. We move from turning spears into pruning hooks into turning guns to garden tools, but the basic image remains of returning to being the people God created us to be: people who nurture life through working in the soil. If you have not heard about these ministries, see this article for one example.