Peace starts with one Person

For 300 years the people in Ireland have lived in the past. For 350 years, really, all they have done is remember the past, taking revenge on one another.  But slowly, one by one, on

both sides, people have begun to repent, to look, not to the past, but to the future.

One of the first to do so was a man named Shane O'Doherty. He was the first former IRA member to come out publicly for peace. Twenty years ago, he was sent to jail for

mailing letter bombs. At his trial as a terrorist for the IRA, he had to sit and listen to people tell what it was like to open those letters. Fourteen people testified against him, all

innocent victims, many of them mutilated because of what he had done. He said it was sitting in that court, face to face with people who had been harmed by his actions that his

conversion began. But it was completed in prison, in his cell, as he was reading Scripture. First, he experienced Jesus' love for him. Then he experienced Jesus' requirement of

him. He knew he had to change.

When he got out of prison, O'Doherty started to talk about building a new future in Ireland, instead of just repeating the past. He found that his life was now being threatened

by his former colleagues. But he continued to do it, because, he said, "I believe that one person is able to make a difference just by talking about peace, just by making his

witness. It begins in any nation, in any community, with one person, then another, and then another, saying, ‘I'm going to accept the future that God is giving to us, rather than

simply repeating the past.’" Every year in Advent they are there, both John and Jesus, challenging us, "Repent; for the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom is at hand." God is offering

us a new future. Let us choose it, turn away from the past, and accept what God is offering us.

As we prepare for Christmas this year, let us pray that there is one person strong enough in the middle east to stand up and “I'm going to accept the future that God is giving to us, rather than simply repeating the past.”