September 21 is designated by the United Nations as International Day of Peace. I believe that the message of peace is needed more in our time than at any other time in the history of our beautiful planet.

 

The world is often a dark place and urgently in need of light. We have three challenges at this point in our history and we need to meet these challenges urgently with all the spiritual goodness and light that we can call upon.

 

The first challenge is the great inequality that exists between those who have too much money and the many people who are living in poverty. We urgently need to make the world a more equal place. Inequality and injustice breeds discontent and leads to violence. We can at least understand the tendency of some Palestinians to turn to violence when they are virtual prisoners, especially in Gaza. We can also at least try to understand Israel when it seeks to protect itself from the violence. Only more justice can bring about more peace.

 

The second great challenge is the environmental crisis that faces the planet. We cannot afford to be spending time and energy and money on fighting each other when our attention should be focused on how to look after our planet. We need to declare a state of emergency and talk about how we are going to hand on our planet to our children in a state that it can continue to support life. We are in grave danger of wiping out the human race and taking a lot of the life with us. We need peace in order to concentrate on what really matters.

 

The third great challenge is Peace itself. On this International Day of Peace let each of us think about how we can be more peaceful and call upon the world to work for that day when war will be no more. We need a revolution of love. Only when we can find love in our hearts will we overcome hate. Only love can break that vicious circle of violence that in the end destroys everything. God is love and love is in all our hearts. Let us work so that Peace One Day is possible. www.peaceoneday.org 

 

I call upon the world to work for peace and a total ceasefire by the 11/11/2018. This is exactly 100 years since the Armistice that ended the First World War. This was meant to be the war to end all wars and what better way to honour our war dead than, at last, to bring war to an end.

 

We need peace right now so that we can put our energies into loving and caring for one another. I call upon all people of good will to seek peace and pursue it. I ask that people turn to their inner selves and find that peace that God wants us all to find.

 

‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ said Jesus.

 

 

Rev Philip Young is Vicar of St. Thomas’ Heigham, Norwich.