In the scriptures, 'peace' means either freedom from strife, contention, conflict, or war, or an inner calm and comfort born of the Spirit that is a gift of God to all of his children, an assurance and serenity within a person's heart.
Imagine for a moment the result if everyone were to love one another as Jesus loves his disciples. We would have no bickering, quarreling, strife, or contention in our homes. We would not offend or insult one another either verbally or in any other way. We would not have unnecessary litigation over small matters.
Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention.
Terrorists are people, too - they are given to error. Naipaul and then DeLillo do a good job in their novels of drawing this out: I'm thinking of DeLillo's contention in 'Mao II' that terrorists have replaced writers as the people who 'alter the inner-life of the culture.' I thought that was marvellous!
'The Grace of Kings' draws on Western traditions as much as it does on Chinese traditions, though the bones of the story are drawn from the Chu-Han Contention period before the Han Dynasty.
That's your goal every week: to put yourself in contention. There's a lot of circumstances and a lot of things that have to play out for that to happen.
Christlike communications are expressions of affection and not anger, truth and not fabrication, compassion and not contention, respect and not ridicule, counsel and not criticism, correction and not condemnation. They are spoken with clarity and not with confusion. They may be tender or they may be tough, but they must always be tempered.
In my case what happened next in 1999 was that I fell apart over that back nine. When I saw I was in genuine contention that year I felt like throwing up. That remains probably the most nervous I've ever been on a golf course.
Hebron is a bone of contention between Israeli settlers and the Palestinians in part because Abraham is buried there, in the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the southern border, along which are some of the safest communities in the country.
