If possible

"If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all" (Romans 12:18).

The verse seems like sugar and spice but it is brutal.

"If possible": Much is possible. Much more than we usually suppose when we give up the race in the first quarter mile, shrugging glibly: "I tried." On Saturday my daughter and I each attempted, independently, to locate information on something. She succeeded and I didn't. Later I asked her how she had done it. She said she just didn't give up when the recording at the main number said to call back on business days; she found an emergency number on the menu and got through to a live person, who reluctantly gave the info. (See Jesus on persistence and "impudence" in Luke 11:8) Sometimes we are limited by our laziness or lack of imagination.

"So far as it depends on you" doesn't let you off the hook if your antagonist is not momentarily in the mood to try very hard for a solution. Never mind him; he has his own drama with God. But YOU, have you gone as far as you can, used every means, tried every weapon of kindness, within the parameters of righteousness?

"Live peaceably with all." Not peace at any price like Neville Chamberlain did. But the peace of Jesus, the kind wrought by making your body a living sacrifice.

I keep coming back to the middle-aged inmate in Michigan who made peace with an impudent young newcomer by giving the right of way to him on the yard track---stepping down from the curb, but then taking the "fish" by the elbow, looking him in the eye, and saying, "How's it going?"

Much is "possible."

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