Members and Friends of Austin Mennonite Church I pray you are fulfilled as you continue your journey of faith. The common mandate to 'make peace' provokes a wide variety, even contradictory set of images in the mind of contemporary Christians in American. Perhaps the predominant concept of what it means to make peace consist of using power to force some preconceived notion of relational behavior upon another party who is responsible for the absence of peaceful conditions. Indeed, one component of our military forces used the slogan, 'Peace is our profession' to describe their motivation for delivering weapons upon deviants in order to persuade them to adopt an alternative lifestyle for their greater good. At the other end of the spectrum the call to make peace requires non-violent passivity, a response that claims to honor the divine initiative by submission to the prior determination for how the universe is intended to unfold. Many Christians are somewhere in between these extremes. Does peace happen by force or by concession? Maybe what we really need is an example of peace so we will know how to recognize peace when does happen. If we could agree on the picture of peace, then perhaps we would be closer to each other in our efforts to make peace. How do we get ready for peace? These thoughts will compose the sermon for this next Sunday, 'On your mark; .get set; .go.' May it go well with you. Sincerely, Garland Robertson ...always hold firmly to the thought that each one of us can do something to bring some portion of misery to an end