All I Want Is World Peace

We all want world peace. But how do we get there? Lisa Simmons considers what we all need to choose to achieve peace.

In Miss Congeniality, a movie staring Sandra Bullock who grates at everything "girly," her character must enter a women's beauty contest, I'm sorry, scholarship program as Candice Bergen's character corrected her, to find out who is trying to harm everyone involved in the pageant. During the interviews with the women, everyone is asked what their greatest wish was, and everyone says, "World Peace."

You know if I could ask every single person on this planet to wish for World Peace for their birthday, I wonder if it would come true? If we could all for just a moment bring to mind Mother Teresa's quote, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other,” I wonder if we could actually make world peace happen?

What keeps world peace from happening? I know the easiest answer is sin. But what keeps us constantly sinning? Our forgetfulness of God? Our pride to not apologize to each other much less to God? Or is the lure of sin whispering in our ears day in an day out. But why should that be more influential than God's love shouting in our ears?

If only we could remember minute by minute, day by day that God loves us, we truly could have peace everywhere. But it takes everyone remembering that day by day and minute by minute. Is it so much to ask?

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Is because we are all individuals, so different? Not so, according to Mahatma Gandhi, who said, 'No two leaves are alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them or between the branches on which they grow.”

Yet those leaves and the trees they grow on aren't given souls like humans are. Unlike the trees or leaves, we were created in God's likeness and also given a free will. Trees have to become trees, and leaves have to be leaves. They don't have a choice in how they will grow. They just do their thing. But humans are different. God did give us souls as well as the freedom to choose. Can you imagine loving something so very much you give total freedom to it?

That's really hard when you are in a relationship or raising children. To give total unrestricted freedom means we have to trust, not only in those other people, but also in the freedom God gave each and every one of us. We have to trust that freedom that each of us has. Yet sin whispers in our hearts to not trust that freedom. Sin encourages us to restrict one another, to be fearful, to be selfish.

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If only we could remember minute by minute, day by day that God loves us, we truly could have peace everywhere. #catholicmom

World peace has always been a wish for many people. We wish good will on everyone in our songs and poems and stories. Yet it is still so unattainable. We know we must want world peace. But how can we get there? We can each individually choose to be peace-loving until someone comes along and destroys our peace. Somehow Jesus was able to keep choosing peace when He was being hung on the cross and mocked. Somehow He still chose to forgive and even ask His own Father to forgive those who don't know what they are doing.

As we move to holidays when we are supposed to be of good cheer and wishing peace on earth towards every man, woman, and child, can we do it like Jesus did? Without reservation, without holding back anything for ourselves? Can we truly strive for world peace -- beginning with me?