Article February 17, 2020 Issue

Be a peacemaker

Sharon Slaton Howell

There it was again. A flowerpot overturned in the street. This was the fourth time my mail carrier had run over my flower bed. He was obviously disregarding my earlier requests to be more careful.

Deciding that enough was enough, I phoned his supervisor at the main post office and told her my problem. She said she would speak to the carrier about being more careful. As you might imagine, this made relations with my mail carrier frosty.

Then, it finally dawned on me: To find a lasting solution in this situation, I needed to take seriously Christ Jesus’ teachings on the importance of loving our neighbor. His beatitude “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9) kept coming to thought. I realized that I wanted to be considered a child of God, so I recognized that I in turn had to see my mail carrier as also a child of God.

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