The Peace of Jerusalem

Tendinitis only becomes frozen shoulder when the shoulder freezes. And it freezes when the pain of movement causes the sufferer to avoid moving it.

Unlike the characters turned to stone by the wicked Queen in the Narnia tales, who were transformed in an instant, mid-movement, a frozen shoulder seems to be a gradual stiffening as a result of pain.

Most of us carry pain of some sort. Emotional scars, spiritual hurts, physical traumas. The temptation is to put a plaster over the hurt and pretend it’s healed. But of course if we don’t lance the wound and get rid of the poison, it will never be truly healed.

The Bible talks of those who cry, ‘Peace, Peace’ where there is no peace. It’s like pretending the problem is fixed and peace is true and lasting, though the causes of the pain are suppurating underneath the ‘fix’. 

There is no peace in Gaza and Jerusalem, and there won’t be until the Prince of Peace himself invades the hearts and minds of the wounded inhabitants from both sides of the conflict. Will this be the Second Coming, or will it involve a movement of the Holy Spirit invading the hearts and spirits of those involved? God knows.

The Bible tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Prayer can thaw the most hardened of hearts, as God turns the heart of stone to a heart of flesh. The stony hearts result from years of pain and trauma which have frozen them into a self-protective defensive attitude. 

Until Jesus comes and enables people to choose to be vulnerable again; until he replaces the hatred and fear with love and trust, however tentative, conflict and anguish will continue. Resolution may involve pain; it will involve forgiveness of a scale unimaginable for most of us, because most of us, thankfully, don’t know how it feels to have a child or a loved one wiped out by a weapon of warfare.

Today I am praying more fervently than ever for the peace of Jerusalem. May God work a miracle in the hearts and minds and spirits of all those involved in the madness and brutality going on there just now, and bring peace.