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Pursuing Peace Here and Now?!

December 5, 2025

Photo by Noel Bailey Robinson

1 Samuel 12:20-25|Psalm 34:9-14| Colossians 1:11-20|John 6:57-63

“Turn from evil and do good.” Psalm 34 prosaically advises us today. But its final line grabs my attention:

Seek peace and pursue it.

Assuming ‘peace’ means more than the absence of idle noise implied by the cliché ‘peace and quiet,’ what do you think the boy poet/psalmist who became the Messiah’s ancestor King David had in mind? I think that one of the Popes I studied during my 75 years as a devout (if fearful) Roman (not Anglican) Catholic wisely advised

To reap justice, sow peace.

What opportunities for peace—for “thy kingdom [to] come and thy will be done” in our churches and homes, neighborhoods and workplaces, towns, cities, state, nation and world—might each of us seek and find? How might prayerful groups of us help to make those dreams of meeting basic human needs for respect, sustenance and safety become realities here on earth, now?

Love in Action, a new ministry, is beginning to blossom here at St. Luke’s.

It’s a natural outgrowth of our four direct-service feeding programs: our Food Pantry, and Lunch on the Hill, our monthly Christ’s Community Kitchen Dinner (all here in East Greenwich) and our monthly Loaves and Fishes delivery of food and clothing to our needy friends in Woonsocket.

Love in Action, chaired by Katie Anderson, meets next December 21 after Sunday’s 10 a.m. service.

Marie Hennedy