7th December 2025
Advent 2: Peace
A few days ago, the Oxford word of the year for 2025 was announced. This year's contenders included "aura farming" - that's cultivating your cool image - and "biohack" - to change an aspect of your diet, exercise regime or lifestyle to optimise your health and performance. But the winner was "rage bait". If you have ever found yourself becoming irate while scrolling through social media, you may have been a victim of rage bait. The term is defined as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive. Because anger increases traffic to websites, social media influencers are hi-jacking our emotions, making us cross.
In the second week of Advent we remember that the promised Messiah is the Prince of Peace, and that God's eternal Kingdom will be a place of justice and of peace. When we look around the world today, it's easy to see that peace is needed. Worldwide, 8 conflicts during 2025 have caused more than 10,000 direct, violent deaths - including those wars that hit our headlines: Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, Sudan, but also conflicts in Myanmar, Ethiopia, DRC and the Mexican Drug War. Because of war, whole communities are devastated and traumatised. Land that cannot be farmed lies desolate, so people starve in famines caused by human aggression. Relationships between different people groups are broken often for generations.
We know this. We pray, regularly, for peace. But the trouble with these statistics is that they can seem to be "out there". We don't always recognise the capacity for rage in our own hearts, our own tendency to be irritated, provoked or offended. Peace has to begin not "out there" but "in here", in our own human hearts. Each time we resist the temptation to give in to "rage bait", each time we choose to listen, rather than snap, each time we choose to reach out to someone with whom we disagree, rather than to ostracise them, we are sowing our own tiny mustard seeds of peace.
The Prince of Peace came not with a 28 point peace deal emblazoned across the world's media, but quietly, by night, the song of the angels heard only by a few baffled, lowly shepherds. He came not to destroy his enemies, but to command his followers to love their enemies. He actively chose not to deploy the superior forces at his command, choosing instead the way of the cross, the way of suffering and death. And through that death, God chose "to reconcile all things... making peace through the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1).
In South Sudan, two people groups, the Dinka Twin and Dinka Nook people, have been in conflict since 2017. At the end of June this year, women from these groups came together for a special event: the Twin and Nook Joint Women Peace Dialogue Meeting. These women have actively committed to be ambassadors for peace in their homes and communities, building bridges between the two groups, and encouraging one another to keep working towards peace. They are, if you like, "peace baiting", choosing the path of respect, forgiveness and dialogue.
I wonder what it would take for "peace bait" to become the word of 2026?
