In the late 1960s I cut school and disappeared into the wilderness with a friend for a long weekend of backpacking. During our absence the Beatles released their landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As we returned to civilization, it was the first thing we tuned in on the car radio. We looked at each other in speechless amazement. The music was so utterly different. It sounds naive now to say this, but to our teenage outlook at the time, it seemed we'd gone into the wilderness and come back only to find our old world gone and a new one in its place.
A departure from the old often opens the way to something new—whether it's a new way of solving problems, of relating to others, or perhaps even a whole new landscape. Imagine a peace negotiator orchestrating this: Send warring parties away from their entrenched positions and into the wilderness. Don't let them come back until a whole new scene awaits them.
A recipe for peace? Actually, Biblical prophecy foreshadows at least part of that idea. Reading the Scriptures for their spiritual meaning lifts us to a new view. From this higher, more spiritual perspective, the issues of conflict are not so insurmountable. Good no longer appears in short supply Thus war is no longer seen as the way to fulfillment or even security. This higher spiritual view discloses a way past hostility to peace.
