Isaiah 2:1-5
Beating swords into plowshares. This verse gets quoted often when we commit to leaving our war-mongering ways behind us and living together peacefully.
When Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accord on the South Lawn of the White House, President Bill Clinton referenced it. It is engraved on a stone wall just outside the United Nations headquarters in New York. Even Michael Jackson sings about it in “Heal the World.”
What does it mean for us to make this commitment today? Do we have an instrument of war that we use every day - the modern-day, less obvious equivalent of a sword? And what would it mean to turn that sword into a plowshare?
I don’t know what the answers are for myself. I do know that as we snuggle up beside twinkling lights in these winter nights leading up to Christ’s birth, it is a good time to reflect on it.
Don’t stop after beating the swords
into plowshares, don’t stop!
Go on beating and make musical instruments out of them.
Whoever wants to make war again
will have to turn them into plowshares first. - Yehuda Amichai
~ Melanie Gao