Practice makes perfect…peace by

Abstract

"There’s a well-known, if apocryphal story of a young musician asking a Londoner how to get to the Albert Hall. The reply comes back, ‘You must practice, practice, practice!’ What is true for musicians applies to athletes too, who, as St. Paul advised, must ‘train, train, train’ with perseverance if they are to win the race (1 Cor 9:25; 1 Tim 4:8). So it should come as no surprise that if Christians are to be peacemakers in a violent world, then they, too, need to enter an arena where the patterns of God’s shalom are rehearsed again and again. Worship provides such a place. It is where the church can practice making peace. While worship is never simply a performance, it may be useful to think of it, and peacemaking, through these musical metaphors of practice and performance"