When A Wall Doesn't Bring Peace
For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.
Ephesians 2:14-16
Leaving my rented Vauxhall behind in the small carpark I passed through the gate onto the roling hills of truly springy turf (it felt like six inches of moss on either side of the dirt path), and went over and laid my hands on the wall. Hadrian's Wall. In 122 A.D. Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus began the building of a 73 mile wall (completed in about six years by Roman legions) to define the boundary of his empire in a place where his predecessors were unable to advance it: northern Britain. Oh those Picts were an uncatchable, unruly lot for those Romans. What do you do when you can't control what bothers you? You do what I did as a kid when my brother and I were sitting in the back of the family car.
"Mom, he's on my side!"
"Dad, he's touching me!"
Smack, smack, smack ... I'd move my arm up and down in a chopping motion over the narrow patch of vinyl we'd call "no-man's-land" between the two sides of the back seat. My brother, totally playing his part in the antagonism, would sneak a poke at me midst the chopping action of my arm. If you can't control them at least try to contain them. Build a wall. I often would dream up the perfect plan of a plexiglass divider between the two sides of the back seat (which never got implemented) fully persuaded that it would give me peace.
What can a body do to truly get the peace he or she needs? You get to know someone, then you actually get to know them, and then you wonder why you got to know them. We're all so different. God doesn't say pretend that barrier of culture and personality isn't there. Nor does He say for us to take a bulldozer to the wall of hostility ourselves with our ideas and plans of what should be. Instead, He takes the full hostility of the two sides upon Himself in His flesh on the cross. The destruction comes upon Him, and in Him the wall comes down. Then the two become one ... in Him. One new humanity made in peace.
From what I'm learning as I prepare to go to Glasgow, Scotland, like everywhere else on this planet, there is a hunger and a need for peace there. Real peace. Not just shutting people up or away. Soul peace. Satan has tricked us into putting up "us-and-them" walls of hostility between the churched (tongue-in-cheek) and the regular folk. Which leaves a lot of people feeling like what's the use?! Then, if the devil can't get us away from church completely, he'll at least get us fighting between churches. What is the ultimate goal of all these walls? To get us walled up in our own little lives away from God and everyone else that could possibly hurt us. What a miserable ending!
I want to see God break down the walls of hostility in not only Glasgow, but in all our lives. It's in what Christ did in His flesh on the cross, and He said "It is finished". Will you pray for Glasgow, Scotland that the barriers to the beautiful news of Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross will be thrown down, and His love and grace will rush in bringing freedom and peace?
