For reflection:

1. If you are honest, where are you in your journey with Jesus towards persistent peace?

2. What does persistent peace look like lived out in our present day, often divisive, society?

3. What is one area of your life that you have been holding on to looking for retribution or revenge? What would/could it look like to lay that down? Who would benefit if you did?

4. How can we develop a working plan for when “we get struck in the face” so we do not allow others to dictate the terms for engagement and knock us off the course of peace and fore-give-ness ?

5. What is a time when you have let someone else dictate the terms of engagement without preparing for peace? What is an example of a time when you have prepared for peace? What were the results?

6. In all three examples used—sit-ins at lunch counters during the African American Civil Rights Movement, Ida B. Wells efforts to bring awareness to the problem of lynching, and Christ’s taking up the cross—what was it that made these efforts different? What made the violence that these people endured and their reaction to it different than others who suffered violence without violent response?

7. As we discuss the idea of when giving your coat to add your shirt as well, how does the context of the verses later in Matthew 6:19-20 impact your understanding of this?

8. As we answer the request of the borrower with generosity, how does giving amply, in excess create harmony where giving less, or the “appropriate” measure might create conflict?