Dedicated to our kids, Ava, Ruby,
Rosie, Andrs, Lou, Hank, and Soren.
May you become the next generation
of everyday peacemakers who join
God in mending our divided world.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Lynne Hybels

ONE - Confused, Divided, and Paralyzed

TWO - Speaking of Peace

THREE - The Divine Pattern

FOUR - Everyday Conflict, Everyday Peacemaking

FIVE - See 

SIX - Immerse

SEVEN - Contend

EIGHT - Restore

NINE - Time to Begin

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

APPENDIX A  - Building a Road Map: Ten Days, Ten Weeks, Ten Months

APPENDIX B  - A Peacemaking Library

NOTES

PRAISE FOR MENDING THE DIVIDES

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MORE TITLES FROM INTERVARSITY PRESS

Copyright

FOREWORD

Lynne Hybels

I was in northern Iraq, in the home of a Muslim sheik. My two North American friends and I had been invited to share a meal with a dozen Muslim clerics. As we sat in a huge circle on the floor, hands deep into a feast of juicy chicken, seasoned rice, and brilliantly colored salads, our new friends poured out their hearts about the suffering of their country.

“Please tell Americans that ISIS does not represent us.”

“Our people—men, women, and children—are being ruthlessly murdered.”

“Here, take these prayer beads. Please join us in praying for peace.”

Silently, I turned my face back and forth from speaker to translator, tears brimming.

After dinner, we sipped sweet mint tea as our host moved from the litany of despair to the poetry of hope. With eyes closed, the sheik began to sing, softly at first, but quickly building to a crescendo of joy. People began to smile, then laugh. New friends! Heartfelt conversation! A shared commitment to a better future! A vision of peace!

I fingered the prayer beads and slowly scanned the room. Was this really happening? And more to the point, how did a small-town Michigan girl end up in war-torn Iraq listening to a roomful of Muslim clerics and a singing sheik?

The truth is, it wasn’t my first time in a war zone. In the early 1990s, as the former Yugoslavia crumbled amidst a series of horrific wars, I visited a medical center in Croatia where devastated civilians stared into space like zombies. In Bosnia I met children so traumatized from watching their parents murdered that they sat all day in school silently chewing their fingernails or drawing pictures of death.

Years later in the Democratic Republic of Congo I met with women brutally raped by rebel soldiers who concluded it was cheaper—and more effective—to rape a woman than waste a bullet on killing her. Rape enough women, they reasoned, and you can destroy the soul of an entire village.

Later still I was challenged by Middle Eastern Christians to better understand the deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. So I traveled to the Holy Land repeatedly, listening and learning. From there I went on to visit Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, where millions fleeing the violence of ...