O peace of the world, O hope in each breast,
O Bethlehem star that ages have blest,
A day of fresh promise breaks over the land,
Gaunt warfare is doomed, and God's kingdom at hand! From cannon and sword shape tillers of soil,
No more let dire hate man's spirit despoil,
Let Truth be proclaimed, let God's love be retold,
That men of good will may their brethren uphold. As stars in their courses never contend,
As blossoms their hues in harmony blend,
As bird voices mingle in joyful refrain,
So God's loving children in concord remain. Our God is one Mind, the Mind we adore;
Ineffable joy His love doth outpour;
Let nations be one in a union of love,
God's bountiful peace, all earth's treasures above.

Irving C. Tomlinson, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 236

THOSE HYMNS and carols many of us sang this past Christmas season seemed especially meaningful and moving. You just couldn't help feeling from the writers' illumined, pure-hearted convictions about peace, how long—and how powerfully—humanity has been sustained in its hopes in spite of so many centuries of conflict.

Why does much of humanity feel this way? Some might answer that it's just a case of naive hope hanging on in an all-too-real world of force and counterforce. In these days of instant communication, few of us escape the news of an entire world still crying out for relief. If there's genocide in Rwanda, we soon hear of it. If there's terrorism in Bangladesh, child armies in the Sudan, suicide bombing in England, Spain, Jordan, or Indonesia, we know.

But may there not be something very new to be learned from the fact that a simple hymn of peace has a realism for the human heart and spirit that no amount of chaos and disaster can dislodge? Is it possible that one of the Christmas hymns in particular has it right, after all, that "the days are hastening on, / By prophets seen of old," that a time is coming when "all the world" can hear the music of peace—and send back the angels' song (emphases added, see Edmund H. Sears, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 158)?

Christ Jesus said, "Happy are those who make peace, for they will be known as sons of God!" (Matt. 5:9, J. B. Phillips). Certainly it's true that the number of peacemakers in the world has multiplied greatly over the centuries. Probably organizations and conferences now number in the thousands. But given the state of the world, something more is obviously needed.

Important as it is to find ways to make peace, once conflict has broken out, even more crucial for progress is for individuals and nations to feel the spirit of peace that overrides and undoes tensions or hate or revenge. And isn't the next necessary step a change in human consciousness itself? Substantial changes of human attitude, for example, preceded progress toward increase of equality for women and more rights for children in many parts of the world. The incredible spread of technology was preceded by many individuals' enlarged sense of possibility, expectation, and discovery.

The role of the individual

In the case of peace, what will happen as individuals stop excluding themselves as having little significant influence? What would be the effect of waking up and becoming far more aware that we're in a perfect position to contribute to the greatest change needed now? It doesn't take a public platform or a high-level role. After all, every one of us thinks, and what we think is literally adding to or detracting from the presence and conviction of peace in human consciousness.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, was no stranger to giving sermons and public addresses to large audiences. Yet she came to a surprising conclusion. She wrote, "More effectual than the forum are our states of mind, to bless mankind" (Pulpit and Press, p. 87).

A close friend of mine told me of an experience she had when she was asked to pray for someone in another country. She received a cellphone call from a young woman, a teacher, who had taken her high-school class to a concert by an extremely popular rock band. The caller asked with great urgency that my friend pray, because the packed concert-hall audience looked as though they were on the verge of rioting. Crowd control was nil; alarm and anger were widespread.

So my friend of course agreed to help. Her prayer began with recognizing God, who is infinite good, as the great reality of being, actually always present and supreme. Disturbing as the news from across the ocean was, she began to feel and "see" something different—a naturalness and primacy to peace and harmony. She felt as though this shift of view brought about by prayer was showing something entirely factual. She thought of these words from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: "The 'still, small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest bound. The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, 'as when a lion roareth.' It is heard in the desert and in dark places of fear" (p. 559).

In the next call from across the Atlantic, the report had changed dramatically. The teacher told of something no one could have expected. A husband and wife who were there with a little girl had hoisted her onto the stage, and the rock-band leader had begun dancing with the child. The audience loved it. The anger and tensions drained away, and the music went on. (Later, the teacher learned that the couple who had lifted up the child happened to be Christian Scientists.)

The peace that is beyond understanding

Jesus apparently knew something profoundly different about peace. For him, peace had existence even before the human scene became peaceful. In fact, it had a solid, objective reality that overarched and subdued the subjective human scene, whether it was a life-threatening storm or an angry crowd bent on pushing him off a cliff. Like everything else in his life, calm and courage flowed from his great assurance of the loving God, who was never absent. He trusted this to the point where, when he was being arrested prior to his crucifixion, he told the disciple Peter to put away his sword. Later, he said to his closest followers: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither be afraid" (John 14:27).

Elsewhere in the Bible, this peace is referred to as "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Phil. 4:7). Wherever it is felt, with its practical effects, this peace does exceed even a good human mind's expectations.

Some years ago, I interviewed an evangelical pastor who had been one of the leaders of the peace marches in Leipzig, Germany, at the beginning of the fall of communism. I asked him searching questions about this change, which had seemed miraculous and startling at the time. Why did he think the troops hadn't broken up or fired on those gatherings? Previously, the government hadn't hesitated to act with crushing force. The pastor began to recite some of the political factors crumbling from within, changes in leadership in the Soviet Republic, the huge size of the demonstrations made up of so many social categories, and so on. Finally, though, he paused. And he told me, "In the end, I have to believe it was the Holy Spirit." You couldn't help feeling that what the man was saying was the very opposite of naivete.

World peacemakers

Some of the greatest peacemakers have felt something of this kind—an unworldly conviction of the sheer reality of peace bringing an irresistible impulsion to their work in the world. The range of individuals who have caught sight of this is remarkable, from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Her son, who had to accept the prize for her while she was still under the unforgiving eyes of a military junta, noted that she'd said, "The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit," and that she had written of "the essential spiritual aims of the struggle." She spoke, he said, "of the underlying concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path, if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitation."

Peace simply isn't something we can leave to others any longer—either the peace that closes down wars, or the peace we need in our own lives. All of us have to find the true source of peace for ourselves in order to lead a life not consumed by the conflicts, divisions, suspicions, and fear of others, which are often said to be natural and unavoidable.

It's really not too hard to do this. It doesn't require being a saint. If we're willing to let our view be shifted by prayer—from the picture we're confronted with to the realness of God and His peace—we can't help seeing things differently. We come to realize that the "enemy" isn't another person, whether of a different race, religion, or culture (and it should probably be added, whether a relative, fellow church member, or employer). The enemy is the mind-set that would keep us or anyone else from comprehending the peace and justice God is already giving. It's this increasing comprehension that makes us activist peacemakers.

Conflict, even with its worst evils, never bespeaks reality. It remains ignorance of—or mistakenness about—the oneness of the human heart and spirit, which the children of the one infinitely good Principle of all being share. Every step of our individual discovery that peace is the reality, changes human consciousness. It assures us that the kind of peace being given of God is astonishing enough to bring the time when the whole world sends back a song.

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