Feeling the pain of those mired in violence

It seems to me that our world is becoming increasingly more violent.

I'm not sure if this is actually true, or if the world has always been this way and we are just more aware of it now because of global connectedness and the media's focus on it.

Either way, there is a lot of un-love in this world, a lot of pain and hard-heartedness and holes in people crying out to be healed and made whole and just wanting to feel OK, trying to fill their emptiness in all the wrong ways. There is a lot of non-listening, a lot of insistence that one's own way is right, a lot of refusal to forgive and accept that everyone doesn't view the world the same. There is a lot of fear, a lot of greed, a lot of desire for power.

There is also a great capacity for peace, because each of us holds within ourselves the power of choice, the ability to choose to be bearers of peace. Maybe not all of us have the power to end international war, but we do have the ability to choose peace in the places of unrest in our own lives, in our relationships and in our attitudes.

Peace in our own hearts begins by letting God love us as he does, completely and totally, the parts of ourselves we like and the parts we find unloveable.

We can allow ourselves to be loved by God and let his love lead us to action. We can allow his love to shape the way we treat our family, friends, strangers and people who have hurt us. We can let his love transform our prejudices, selfishness and fears. We can allow his love to transform our violent attitudes toward prisoners, the death penalty and war, to mercy and compassion because we have experienced the freedom he has given us when we didn't deserve it and the worth he places in our own human life. We can let this love move us to patience in traffic, at the store, at our jobs. We can let it help us treat each person as Christ.

And for the people we may never meet whose lives are ruled by violence? We can mourn with these people. We can allow ourselves to feel their pain, and let this transform our attitudes and break our hearts of stone, making our hearts into soft places for our Lord to rest his head. We can realize that people who have been hurt by violence, whether as victims or as culprits, are part of Christ's body -- our body -- and we can feel their pain with them, offering it up as a prayer for healing to our God.

John 1:5 says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (NAB). What a triumphant, courage-giving truth.

If each person allows the peace of God to reign in our hearts and lives, there will be no violence. Peace starts with each of us.

Mia Pohlman is a Perryville, Missouri, native and a recent graduate of Truman State University with a bachelor's degree in English.