Wednesdays in the Word: Verse P

My name is Bekah, and conflict makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Ryan says I have an awfully big bark, but very little bite. It's true. Case in point...if I'm behind the wheel, which you know I am, most of the time, I don't hesitate to loudly offer my thoughts when a driver cuts me off as I enter the interstate. But oh dear goodness, if the window were down and he or she could hear me? I'd be rendered mute. Please don't hear me. Please don't get mad at me. Please don't shoot me. {I watch a lot of Lifetime movies.}

I hate confrontation. I hate conflict. I hate for anyone to be out of sorts {at least toward me}. I hate for anyone to be upset or sad.

People. Pleaser. To. The. Max.

But I've learned that there's a difference between avoiding conflict and making peace.

I can run from potential-road-rage-shooters to avoid the conflict {and the gunshot} but it doesn't do a blessed thing to actually advocate peace.

Sowing in peace...requires action. Maybe words. Maybe a hug. Maybe a gift. {They don't call them peace offerings for nothing.} Maybe presence.

While I have never claimed to be a gardener, I remember enough of the process my parents went through when I was growing up to know that sowing a garden is an investment. It's tending. It's tilling hard ground and planting seeds and feeding them with water and weeding out what threatens to kill and covering when weather is harsh and protecting from hungry pests. It takes time. It takes perseverence. It takes patience.

Sowing peace in a conflict-saturated situation requires all those things in a different way.

But if you do...if I do...look at the reward: a harvest of righteousness. Not just an avoided conflict, but the actual productive harvest of something good in its place.

I am not even going to lie to you: I feel like the biggest hypocrite in the world right now writing this to you. I'm not good at this. I'd rather run from the garden than put in the work. I really would. This one is kicking me...but I'm offering these words as a word of conviction to myself that being a peacemaker requires the work of sowing to see the reward of a righteous harvest.