When People Have Hurt You, If You Really Want Peace: A Story of Seats… For Advent & the Peace Candle
You know, they can go ahead if they want to, sure, and light the hope and peace candles those first two weeks of Advent —- but honestly, that doesn’t mean you aren’t still out here scrounging around for even just a bit of hope that there’s going to be any real peace to be found:
You can wage peace –wherever you war against your own self-righteousness.
Peace in the weary family, peace around the awkward Christmas table, peace on our blinking screens, in the blaring headlines, or in the tender chambers of our hurting hearts, peace in this whole bruised ole world.
Turns out — and this is where I keep tenderly sitting, where I feel deep hope:
You can wage peace –wherever you war against your own self-righteousness.
I once went to a Christmas concert right about this time of year, and lingering before the humble nativity mid-Advent, you can feel it:
While the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, comes down to the manger, right into our muck and mire, to meet us with grace— how often do we, with mucky, mired lives, try to sit in the place of the King and meet others with our judgement?
While the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, comes down to the manger, right into our muck and mire, to meet us with grace— how often do we, with mucky, mired lives, try to sit in the place of the King and meet others with our judgement?
During the intermission of the Christmas concert, I slipped out for a cup of warmed, mulled apple cider, mingled with all the other smiling merry-makers, and then, eventually, made my way back to my seat… only to have someone lean over and very gently smile, “Hi…. um… I think you’re in the wrong seat?”
And as I blushed and fumbled an embarrassed apology, and turned to find my own seat, my heart felt this settling;
What if peace is mostly about committing to not sit in the place of the Prince of Peace Himself?
Only the Prince of Peace can sit in the judgement seat.
All the rest of us have only mercy seats saved for us.
And we are only saved when we sit in the mercy seat.
Only the Prince of Peace can sit in the judgement seat. All the rest of us have only mercy seats saved for us.
And we are only saved when we sit in the mercy seat.
Because the thing is, in the midst of us all looking for peace:
If you’re judging anyone there from your judgement seat — you’re somehow not in your right seat.
You’ve somehow sat down in God’s seat — and God wants His seat back.
Because…
If we happen to be sitting in judgement of anyone, haven’t we somehow put ourselves in the place of the only One just judge — the only One who can happen to bring the justice that brings real peace?
It’s a profound epiphany to realize you don’t want to sit in the judgement seat, because it’s not judgement for yourself that you ever want.
Because:
If we hold all their sins and failures rightly against them, shouldn’t God rightly hold all of our sins and failures against us?
It’s a profound epiphany to realize you don’t want to sit in the judgement seat, because it’s not judgement for yourself that you ever want.
Isn’t it impossible for me to be in the mercy seat for me, while simultaneously being in the judgement seat for them?
This changes things, interior things. This moves much peace in.
When you realize what you daily need, more than anything else, is the mercy seat — for how you’ve hurt someone when you didn’t realize it, for how you’ve been self-centered and didn’t see it, for how you’ve got a blind spot and wounded someone a lot — that you absolutely need to stay in the place where you’re served extravagant grace, that you desperately need the seat where only grace is coming to meet you … then you’re kept from stealing the seat where you sit in judgement of anyone else.
This is where I find myself as we light the Peace candle the second week of Advent, this is the hope I return to and repeat:
When the anger burns over their barbed words, when the angst rises over the real injustice, when their wrong disturbs your peace — there is deep comfort in simply whispering:
“I’m in the wrong seat. Come, mind, come heart, I’ve found you sitting in the wrong seat. Come back to your right seat of mercy, and much of your interior world rights.”
Move your mind and heart back to the mercy seat, and your whole life gets deep peace back.
Move your mind and heart back to the mercy seat, and your whole life gets deep peace back.
You get peace when you stay in the mercy seat, and let the Prince of Peace alone have the judgement seat.
And there in your mercy seat, you get to say it aloud, and feel the relief and freedom of it:
“I hope you can hear how you’ve hurt and harmed me, but no matter what, nothing ever has the power to take away the peace I have from sitting right here in the mercy seat, where I’m completely safe bedside the Prince of Peace, whose grace and justice is working to make the realest peace.”
You can hear that too this time of year, hear the bells chiming everywhere, as the old familiar carols play… and “the words repeat. Of peace on earth, good-will to men…”
Come the second week of Advent, the Peace candle flickers, and I have my own words that I repeat, and what I feel is the hope of real peace burning warm and sure within…
There’s this deep comfort in simply sitting in the right seat.
OUR FREE GIFT FOR YOU THIS ADVENT SEASON TO BRING MORE PEACE
My newest book finishes the story The Greatest Gift began: Come be Loved To Life
A 40-Day Spiritual Pilgrimage following the entire life of Jesus, through the Gospel of John, taking us to the Tree of Calvary & the Fullest Life.
You know how a 25 Day Advent journey by the Christmas tree, to unwrap the Greatest Gift of Jesus in the manger is a gift of love?
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