April 11, 2017

April 11, 2017

Hebrews 12:14

"Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord."

My ultimate New Years Resolution for this year and every year forward is to make an impact, and through the impact, show the Lord to every person possible.

I had a teacher in seventh grade.  Her name was Cynthia James. She was my science teacher that year and she was really amazing.  I don't mean about science, even though she was really good at teaching that too (I remember learning about genetics a little bit using Spongebob Squarepants tables and such).  She was fun, but she was more than that. She was always talking about being a "peacemaker." 

Always.

That's the number one thing she would say to us, "Be a peacemaker."

She taught me a lot. At that school, that year, and the year afterward, was hard. 

I found that I was one of the only Christian girls in my grade level, and the others who were Christians kind of followed the crowd. I loved them, and when I was with them, I didn't feel alone. But that wasn't all the time. So there was a lot of the time when I felt lonely, and I would go talk to Mrs. James. I would talk to her about God, because I couldn't talk with anyone else about that. She understood me, and gave me advice, and would talk to me about being a peacemaker and doing everything I can to make peace with everyone. 

She has stuck with me ever since then. She left our school after that year, and I was so sad. (Luckily, I would make friends with the teachers the next year too!) But before Mrs. James left, she gave each of us a little ribbon. A silly sticky ribbon, and it had a star on it, and the star was sparkly. On the ribbon it read, 

"You make a difference!"

She gave us two of them. One, from her to us, to remind us that we are amazing and we do make a difference, no matter how small we think we are. And the second was for someone else. It was up to us who to give it to, but it was to remind someone else of their difference in our life.

I gave my other ribbon to a woman at Camp Cazadero who always made a difference with music to me. 

But the point of this whole talk, and this verse, is that we, as Christians, need to be peacemakers, everyday.

If we don't show peace to others, who will?

And if we don't show peace to others, they won't see the Lord.

All I want is for people to see the Lord through me, don't you?

So this week, work on being a peacemaker for God!

Show love to someone. 

Show peace.

Show the Lord.