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Many of us live in conflict. This is sad, but true.

It is particularly sad because we all want so desperately to live in peace. We want lives free from conflict.

I think we do many things wrong, that end up causing us even more conflict. While most of us don’t go looking for a fight, I’m not sure how much effort people expend to be ‘peace makers,’ or even ‘peace keepers.’

“I just want to live in peace,” a fifty-year old man recently said to me. “I’ve been at odds with my wife for years. I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

“Why do you think you are at odds with her so much?” I asked, noticing him look blankly at me. His eyes looked sad and a bit sunken as he appeared to be reflecting pensively.

He chuckled.

“If I knew that,” he said, pausing, “I’d stop whatever it was.”

“Would you?” I asked. “A lot of people say they want peace more than anything, but they do a lot of things that either create conflict, or don’t do what they could do to bring about peace.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’m the one to create the conflict,” he said defensively. “I know I’m pointing the finger here, but my wife is not an easy woman to live with.”

“So, you’d say it is mostly her fault that there is so much conflict?”

“I know this sounds self-righteous, but ‘yes’ I think it is mostly her,” he said. “Not that I create my share of problems, but the lion’s share is on her.”

Most of us echo this man. We point the finger elsewhere, failing to see our part in the equation. Much of the time, we are missing the boat. We are doing far more to contribute to the conflict than we realize, and perhaps more important, we are not doing our part to be peacemakers and peacekeepers.

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Source: Crosswalk.com

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