A Prayer for Peace

“The true Christ-method of living can banish human conflicts and the horror of war and bring about peace and understanding on earth; all prejudices and enmities must fall away. That is the challenge placed before those who would be the peacemakers of God.”

~Paramahansa Yogananda

Today, on this National Day of Prayer, I prayed for Peace. My prayer for peace stems from a book I am reading by Paramahansa Yogananda titled, The Yoga of Jesus.  In this short but powerful book, Yogananda—a legendary spiritual teacher who brought yoga to the west in the 1920s—shares various teachings of Jesus and includes scripture from the Bible. The bit of scripture as quoted in the book, and what inspired this post, is Mathew 5:9.

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

Yogananda talks about how peace is a manifestation of God’s presence during meditation and how one’s inner silence is a pathway to Divine relationship with God. He continues with, “Anyone who brings peace to an inharmonious family has established God there.”

Yogananda explains that “family” doesn’t just mean one’s immediate or biological unit, but family as a human race. He says we are all one, stating, “Those who are God’s children cannot feel any difference between an Indian, American, or any other nationality or race.”

I find the following words especially relevant because of our current state of divisiveness, driven by the color of one’s body, or lack thereof, their place of origin, political leanings, individual belief system and a wild number of other things.

“For a little while immortal souls are garbed in white, black, brown, red or olive-colored bodies. Are people looked upon as variously foreign when they wear different colored clothes? No matter what one’s nationality or the color of his body, all of God’s children are souls. When a man confines his identity to his clannish human nature, it gives rise to unending evils and the specter of war.”

May we know each other as one “race” by drawing on our courage to celebrate our (human) differences while, simultaneously, seeing our sameness (as immortal souls).

Peace to you.

Amen.