Peace on Earth

The 2024 Visionary Peace Art Has Arrived!

Each year Pacem in Terris partners with schools and other community organizations, inviting students across the state of Delaware to prepare works of visual art showing what peace means to them.  This year Pacem in Terris received submissions from more than 650 students, ages 5 to 18, from 30 organizations.  Through a juried process, artwork was selected for inclusion in traveling exhibits which will be displayed in various settings throughout the state.  St Stephen’s received a collection of 14 pieces, which we’ll host in our Gathering Area through Advent and the Christmas Season.  

This is one of my favorite community partnerships, and I hope you will make time to enjoy the artists’ impressive work as well as their statements. Each student was invited to explain their piece, thinking about the questions “What is your vision of a peaceful world?” and “What does peace mean to you?”  Here are some of their responses: 

To achieve peace mankind only needs to find a way to coexist with nature and cease their industrial conquest.

To me peace means that everybody comes together and there is no arguing or fighting….peace is also when people work together to achieve something and they have fun while doing it.

My vision of a peaceful world is there is no violence and everyone is fair with one another.

What peace is for me is the ocean….such a beautiful and mesmerizing thing to watch in its calm state and when it’s reckless.

Kindness is the key to world peace.

A peaceful world looks like when people can be outside without being shot or kidnapped. It looks like when people can be kind to others instead of starting problems with people in the community.

Peace to me means kindness and respect.

Peace…means that we welcome and are kind to everyone that we meet, even if they don’t look like us, wear the same clothes as us, or talk like us.  No matter what we should have peace with everyone we meet.

A peaceful world is everyone working together.

Peace makes us stronger together.

As people of faith, we understand peace as a gift from God, whether we are speaking of peace in our homes or peace among nations, whether we simply mean the absence of conflict or, more profoundly, the presence of justice. To realize that our children’s dreams and visions of peace are, perhaps, broader and more encompassing than would have occurred to us at the same ages, is to catch a glimpse of the hopeful future that is possible for all of us.

May God bless our city and our neighborhoods with abiding shalom, as envisioned by Delaware’s youngest artists.

Pastor Sue