"Peace Returned" by Sue Wright Advent Devotional 2020
PREFACE
How do you measure peace? For instance, peace on Earth? Would you require—as if it could ever happen—all 7.822 billion people who populate the world lay down their arms and join hands in the greatest soda pop commercial ever created? Peace on Earth almost equal to the one promised in Heaven?
Or being skeptical of the odds of such an event occurring anytime soon, would you prefer quantifying peace in more personal numbers? In each of our own capacities to feel it on occasion? Some of us brimming with peacefulness inside; some of us, not so much.
This Season of Advent, we will be studying the subject of Peace on Earth: The Need for Peace; The Peace Between, The Peace Within; The Peace We Wage; The Prince of Peace; and The Gift of Peace. We hope what you read will bring you and yours not only a minute’s peace and quiet but, in Peter’s words, “a peace to seek after and pursue.” (The guide is available online each day or as a printed guide. To obtain a printed guide, please call the church office at 816-781-2824, and arrange for one to be picked up.)
My thanks to the twenty-nine writers from our congregation who have shared their stories and reflections this year. Thank you, Andrea Huffman, for selecting our guide’s scriptures from the lectionary and fellow editor, Janet Hill, for its design. Thank you, diligent proofreaders.
Once again, rather than a devotional, I offer a tale of fiction, this one the size of a cat—a cat not unlike the six hundred million cats who pad our globe. May it bring a smile to your Advent Season and a moment of peace as we move toward Christmas and the end of this not always peaceable year.
Sue Wright
PEACE RETURNED
by Sue Wright
Hope stood at the door and meowed so loudly everyone in the little house came running—first, Faith, then Love, and finally, Miss Sophie.
“Whatever is wrong?” asked Miss Sophie, her tone impatient. She was in the middle of wrapping one last present to go under the tree and didn’t need a distraction this late on Christmas Eve.
In answer, Hope meowed again while Faith and Love pressed themselves hard against their brother.
“Okay, you three,” said Miss Sophie, “Move over, and I’ll see what’s out there.” Pulling the door open, Miss Sophie and the sibling toms exclaimed as one in a mix of joyful noise.
“You’re back!” cried Miss Sophie. “Our Peace is back, boys!” With that, she picked up the dainty Calico and cradled her in her arms like an infant child, the other three cats brushing their furry sides against Miss Sophie’s legs to express an equally enthusiastic welcome. All four cats had been rescued at six-week olds from a shelter, Faith, Hope, and Love out of one cage—Peace from another.
Miss Sophie hadn’t been sure the four cats would get along, but she couldn’t bear leaving any of them behind. Besides, all of the shelter’s pets had been offered four for the price of three that day.
Once home, the kittens had lived amicably, the brothers happy to adopt a multi-color sister into their otherwise one-color family. Faith, Hope, and Love got hissy with one another at times, but Peace, whose quieting presence passed even Miss Sophie’s understanding, could calm the worst of snits, for example, fights over favorite balls or a toy mouse.
No wonder then, when Miss Sophie left the back door ajar one day, and Peace decided to go for a walk from which she did not return, nothing felt the same. Faith, Hope, and Love forgot they were brothers and only cared who was most important to Miss Sophie. Competition raged between them.
“The greatest of these is ME,” snarled Love. “I heard Miss Sophie read that from the Bible.”
“Love is way over-rated,” Faith growled in retort. “Love will only break your heart!”
“He’ll claw you too if you don’t stay out of his way!” whimpered Hope. He licked his hind leg, where his brother had drawn blood during their last kerfuffle.
Miss Sophie was a wise and caring mother, but she had not been successful in reducing the friction between her male felines. In recognition of the still young cat’s singular power to bring tranquility back to their home, Miss Sophie hugged Peace even closer, and it was at that moment, she discovered something about Peace, which would take her totally aback. Raising Peace high in the air, Miss Sophie’s suspicion was confirmed. Her strayed kitty was about to give birth. Peace had run off before she could be spayed.
“Hold on,” commanded Miss Sophie, setting Peace on the floor midst her mewling brothers along with a bowl of cat food. “I’ve got the perfect cardboard box to make a cozy bed for you to have your kittens if you don’t get in too much of a hurry.”
None too soon, Miss Sophie slid the cardboard box made soft and comfortable with a fluffy towel into a corner of the kitchen where Peace immediately went to work delivering her baby—yes, just one—much to Miss Sophie’s relief. She chuckled to herself, watching Peace’s tiny son drink milk from his mother, and pondered what to name her family’s unexpected gift of a newborn.
For all her years ever after, folks who stopped by to wish their variety of season’s greetings to the old woman and her kitties begged Miss Sophie to recount the story of the starry night God sent her and Faith and Hope and Love, their very own “Prince” of Peace.
“Indeed, that was a miracle night,” Miss Sophie liked to say. The night her yowling cats became a purr again.