Pursuing Peace

Actively moving towards peace

Pursuing peace feels like a big challenge in today’s world. I’ve been thinking a lot about this since hearing my pastor share a verse from Hebrews 12 on Sunday morning. He shared a lot of scripture, and Hebrews 12:14 is the one verse I kept going back to.

Hebrews 12:14 says, “Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness - without it no one will see the Lord.” (CBS)

Other versions use the words “strive” or “make every effort to” at the beginning of the verse. I decided to look up the word pursue in the dictionary. Don’t worry, I do know what pursue means. I was curious about how many different definitions there were and what other words could be used instead of pursue.

Pursue is an active word. It means to find or employ measures to obtain or accomplish; to proceed along; to engage in; to be involved in. I also looked at the thesaurus and found these synonyms: chase, track, and follow. I see a lot of verbs in those definitions and synonyms, and they all mean that some form of action is involved. (I didn’t plan to do an English lesson in this post today!)

When we pursue something, we are not sitting on the sidelines; we are actively engaged in meaningful ways to obtain it.

I definitely try to pursue peace in every aspect of my life. I am the peacemaker in my family. I truly want everyone to get along. However, I have realized that I may not be pursuing peace with everyone like I ought to be doing.

Earlier I said that pursuing peace seems like a big challenge in today’s world. I say that because I am seeing people at odds with each other and being okay with that. It doesn’t seem like many people want to pursue living at peace with anyone. If you go on social media, you can definitely see this play out.

I want to add that I don’t believe living at peace with everyone means just being a doormat and not engaging in arguments that have merit. I believe that pursuing peace with everyone means having the wisdom and grace to know when to speak and when not to speak.

I pray that as I daily walk with the Lord, He will provide me with the wisdom and grace to pursue peace with everyone and to pursue holiness. This is one reason why I strive to spend dedicated time each day in God’s word.

Are you a peacemaker? Is pursuing peace with everyone easy for you? Or does it take work for you to pursue peace?