“Wherefore, I would speak unto you that are of the church, that are the peaceable followers of Christ, and that have obtained a sufficient hope by which ye can enter into the rest of the Lord, from this time henceforth until ye shall rest with him in heaven. And now my brethren, I judge these things of you because of your peaceable walk with the children of men.” One of the definitions of the word peaceable is “inclined towards peace.” I love that. When we are peaceable, we focus our thoughts, our actions, and all of our energy and resources on obtaining or creating or maintaining peace. To be peaceable does not require us to be in a peaceful environment or situation. When we are inclined towards peace, then we are more concerned about making peace than we are about being right or getting even. When we are inclined towards peace, we look for ways to bring order to chaos. When we are inclined towards peace, we recognize that peace starts with us. President Benson explained how peace must ripple outwards. "The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.” When we are inclined towards peace we do not have it backwards. We do not try to end the war in our environment and hope that the cessation of hostilities will calm the war that is in our heart. There is no armistice or pact or treaty that can force us to abandon the hate and violence inside our souls. It is only when we banish war from our hearts that we can hope to bring peace to our homes, and then to our communities, and then to our nations. To be inclined towards peace is to draw out our souls nigh unto our Savior Jesus Christ in love and hopeful anticipation, even when we are wading through much sorrow and affliction. To be inclined towards peace means that we can trust in the wisdom of God even if He does not give us answers to the questions that nag us with doubts and try to steal away our peace. Those of us who walk peaceably do so knowing that all the powers of men and demons may scream and rage but they will not prevail against the Rock upon which we have built. When we are peaceable followers we can temporarily be deprived of peace and yet still labor with all diligence to prepare the way for its return. In Lehi’s vision, some people who were clinging to the rod of iron and walking the strait and narrow path and making it to the tree and tasting the fruit were doing so perhaps because they thought that as soon as they tasted that fruit it would fix everything that was wrong with them and the world around them. They hoped that by achieving this or that milestone the work would be done and the tests and trials would be over. They wanted peace to be inclined towards them. They wanted the Plan to be bent and warped to fit their idea of peace and happiness and for all good things to flow towards them. They had struggled to make sense of the world and their place in it and they thought that once they got that final assurance of God's love they could look back out at the world and find that it all made sense. But the other group was so focused on the Tree of Life and its precious fruit that they heeded not what the world had to say about them. They were inclined towards peace. They had made peace with the warring factions in their soul - the need to have faith and the need to understand, the desire to be good and the desire to feel good, patience and impatience, pride and humility, aggression and appeasement, fight and flight. They recognized that peace is more of a state of mind than a state of affairs. When we are inclined towards peace we don't get distracted by who's right and who's wrong, what's fair and what's not, or why us and why not them? We do what is right because it is right, whether our righteousness is rewarded or punished, celebrated or ignored, leads to success and happiness or failure and misery. I know that if we aim our hearts towards peace so that we become peaceable followers of Jesus Christ, then we will be able to weather all of the conflict and turmoil both within and without and find rest and refuge in the Atonement of our Lord. Peace may not always be within our grasp but that does not mean we can't always be working to get closer to it.
