We are a generation that is seeking peace on many levels—between nations, among friends and family, and especially within ourselves. Numerous ideas and philosophies exist regarding how to achieve peace in each of these areas. In this issue of Generation, we challenge the numerous conceptions of peace that compete for our attention and present a radically new notion of peace: Peace is a person.

Horatio Spafford was a successful lawyer in Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century. He had invested a small fortune in real estate along the shores of Lake Michigan, only to lose it all in the Chicago Fire of 1871. Not long thereafter his four daughters drowned at sea as they and his wife sailed for Europe. In his passage to be with his bereaved wife, near what was thought to be the area where his four daughters had drowned, Mr. Spafford wrote these lines:

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul!"

How could a man, in the teeth of a tragedy that surpasses our worst nightmares, pen such words? His secret lay in the last verse of his poem: "For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live...."

The peace this grieving father experienced was clearly not a fleeting emotion or the product of a change in circumstance—indeed, the pang of tragedy was fresh upon him, and his situation had in no way improved. What he experienced was nothing less than Jesus Christ Himself as a deep, indescribable, personified peace.

This is the peace that God wants us all to experience. When we receive Christ, we receive peace that transcends our outward circumstances and stills our inner conflict. With the hope that you will open to consider peace as the man Jesus Christ, we present this issue of Generation.

The Editors

"And coming, He announced peace as the gospel to you."
Ephesians 2:17