Luke 10:5-6 NLT

Whenever you enter someone’s home, first say, “May God’s peace be on this house.” If those who live there are peaceful, the blessing will stand; if they are not, the blessing will return to you.

I remember the transfer of responsibility for the welfare of my parents being passed onto me. With a diagnosis of terminal cancer, my dad, a strong if silent individual, who had fought through the whole of the Second World War, including participating in three land invasions, mentally accepted that he would soon pass from mortality into eternity. He asked me to oversee my parents’ move from their family home in London to a flat in Portsmouth, the city where I lived. In the fraction of time it took for me to accept my father’s request, I felt the weight of that responsibility settle on my shoulders.

It has taken far longer for me to acknowledge and then accept the responsibility of serving God’s kingdom objectives with my whole heart and life. I am to see all of life through eyes redeemed through God’s grace. My decisions are to be made in the light of eternity. I am to live in ways that demonstrate that “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20-21, NIV). So, I am required to practise hospitality. One part of that responsibility is to share the peace of Christ’s presence and rule with all those who I meet. I am to respect them and to pray for them. Such prayers are always for their well-being.

For me this means that whenever anyone visits me, I seek to welcome them as I would welcome Jesus. If I visit someone, then I am to carry God’s peace into their home and pray for their good. I have learned from my interest in St Francis to adopt his greeting as my prayer. “[itals]Pax et Bonum[end itals],” he would say – peace and goodness be with you and your household: my simple understanding. I don’t use the Latin as a greeting, but I do pray both for my host.

QUESTION: Do you want to be a channel of peace and goodness?

PRAYER: May the peace of Christ go with me and rest on those places I visit this week.