In 1990s when the USSR collapsed and the cold war ended there was a feeling of optimism and hope that wars might diminish and maybe even end. They did not.
The scriptures speak of a time when wars will end. Do you believe that time will come soon?
Micah 4:1 And this shall be: In the last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord will be prepared at the top of the mountains and high above the hills. And the people will flow to it. 2 And many nations will hurry, and will say: "Come, let us ascend to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob. And he will teach us about his ways, and we will walk in his paths." For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 3 And he will judge among the many peoples, and he will correct strong nations, even from afar. And they will cut up their swords into ploughs, and their spears into hoes. Nation will not take up the sword against nation, and they will no longer learn to wage war. 4 And a man will sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and there will be no one to fear, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. 5 For all people will walk, each one in the name of his god. But we will walk in the name of the Lord our God, forever and ever.
The thing is that we have been, since the end of the second world war, experienced what modern historians sometimes call "the long peace". There have certainly been wars and conflicts since then, and in some cases truly brutal things have happened; but on the global scale we haven't seen the kind of brutal conflict that previous generations were more intimately familiar with. This is especially true of western and other industrialized nations. Most western nations haven't, for example, experienced what war is like in their own backyards in almost 80 years or more.
Such relative peace, which has brought most of us a great deal of comfort and generally privileged lives, almost certainly cannot last in the long-term.
We should always strive for peace, but we cannot assume peace. Human nature and history show us, time and again, that the powerful will constantly try and exploit and dominate the weak. It sometimes only takes one person to gain power to upend peace and bring injustice and tyranny--and it is the least of these who will suffer for it.
Will there be a day when the world shall know peace? Yes, but it will never be achieved by the machinations of men who desire power, and who scheme to exploit their fellow men and dominate others. Peace and justice shall one day reign, on the Day when God shall set all things to rights, on the Day when Christ the King shall descend in glory and judgment, when death is itself destroyed and torn asunder; on the Day when finally these words of the Prophets shall be made full. On that Day, even the leopard and the lamb shall live in peace, even the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and we will have forgotten swords and spears for they will all be beaten and converted into ploughs and pruning shears.
This is why the Church daily prays and hopes, "Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!". Not because we desire escape from the world and its troubles, but because we desire the healing and salvation of this world and deliverance from her troubles. For, as the Apostle reminds us in Romans 8, even creation itself groans with labor pains, as the old world is dying and the hope of the new which is to come.
Even still, right here, in the midst of this, we stand as a people invited to share in suffering and to bear that suffering in love. To be those blessed peacemakers that our Lord calls us to be; and to surrender our lives over to Jesus who reminds us that in this world we will have trouble, but to take heart for He has overcome it.
So even as we recognize that true peace can never be achieved through the efforts of sinful men; nevertheless we strive and aim for peace here and now. Even as we recognize that in this present age true justice is not achieved, but nevertheless we strive for justice. Though "the poor we will always have", nevertheless, it is to the poor that Christ commends and commands His Church to be ministers.
The tragic reality of suffering, poverty, war, and injustice is not something we simply raise up our hands in defeat over, saying, "Nothing can be done, so we should not even try"; rather it is in the hope of what God has declared for the world in Christ that we, looking forward to that future Day bear in hope, through faith, acting in love right here and now in the midst of our neighbors and communities and nations.
The hope of the resurrection is not an invitation to laziness and complacency, but precisely the opposite of that. It is in the hope of the resurrection that, St. Paul says, our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).
-CryptoLutheran
