Peace, with power

For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old,

When, with the ever-circling years, shall come the time foretold,

When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,

And all the world give back the sound which now the angels sing.

---Edmund Sears

Advent II, and our thoughts turn to peace. As many kinds of turmoil there are, I can envision dimensions of peace. And the beginning of peace, for me, is in a given name for the Baby we fete this season. Emmanuel. God with us. Not over us. Not up there. But WITH us. Feeling our hurts, knowing our pains and fears and sorrows, our hatreds and petty grievances. There is the beginning of peace in a God who chooses WITH us over anything else.

I won’t lie. The complete text of this hymn, written in 1849 by Massachusetts minister Edmund Sears, is one of the most incisive studies of peace, and how we destroy it, that I have ever read. Almost no hymnal includes all the verses, but you can find them complete on several internet sites, and I encourage you to do so . Its power will affect you deeply.

This verse perfectly bridges the time between the Advent weeks of ‘hope’ and ‘peace’. It looks forward to a time when the world will be set right, in tune with the song of the angels, at peace. Sears’ original text called this the ‘age of gold’. Imagine, a time when peace, personified, flings its splendors over the whole world; a time when warring and internal turmoil cease around the globe; a time when we mortals can forget our war-cries and shouts of hate and fear, and fill our mouths and hearts to echo back the peace song the angels have sung all along.

Lo, the days are hastening on…