By Doug Redford
You may not know that in 2025, the International Day of Peace or World Peace Day will be celebrated on Sunday, September 21. In fact, World Peace Day is observed every September 21 and has been since 1981. The United Nations created the day as a way to highlight humanity’s need to strive continually for the achievement of world peace.
At the north garden area of the United Nations building in New York City is a sculpture that was a gift from the Soviet Union in 1959. The bronze figure portrays a man holding a hammer in one hand, while in the other hand he holds a sword that he is beating into a plowshare with the hammer. The action is based, as many will recognize, on a verse found in Isaiah 2:4. Using that verse’s imagery on the sculpture reflects the desire of people everywhere to put an end to war and to use destructive weapons for more humane purposes.
Peace has always been a fervent goal and hope of the human race. Real peace, however (just like real love and real joy), can never be achieved apart from the God of peace and the Prince of peace, Jesus Christ. The promise of Isaiah 2:4 follows the desire in verses 2 and 3 of “all nations” and “many peoples” to learn the ways of the Lord. Apart from him, genuine, lasting peace is an impossibility.
In that same passage, Isaiah describes the word of the Lord as going forth from Jerusalem. If we move forward to the New Testament, we see Jerusalem as the city of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, over which he wept as he approached it with these words: “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace” (Luke 19:42, New Living Translation). In an upper room in Jerusalem where Jesus shared the first Communion with his disciples, he spoke of a peace unlike anything the world can ever provide (John 14:27). Following Jesus’ death and resurrection, the gospel was first proclaimed and the church was established in Jerusalem.
As we gather today to observe Communion together, we can do so with an understanding that Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled, not in a bronze sculpture but in a blood-stained cross. Because of that cross, today and every Lord’s Day—in fact, every day lived in fellowship with the Prince of peace—is Peace Day.
Doug Redford has served in the preaching ministry, as an editor of adult Sunday school curriculum, and as a Bible college professor. Now retired, he continues to write and speak as opportunities arise.
Contact us at cs@christianstandardmedia.com
0 Comments