It pushes us out of the shadows of our prejudices. It cannot play class games in the office and will not allow us to prattle about other people when we have made no serious efforts to talk things through. Reconciliation is not just a doctrine. It is the compelling demand of the cross in all our broken relationships. Reconciliation is the best curriculum for good citizenship, and parenting.
Reconciliation says, however hard a task it is, keep working at it in Northern Ireland.
God's ultimate goal is a bring-back, buy back plan. It is to create a community in which all hostilities will cease, as everything becomes reconciled in Christ. Christians are all called to be ambassadors - agents of reconciliation pointing people to forgiveness in Christ and reminding us of our obligations towards one another. A society which anticipates the time when hostility and hatred ends. And it will start in our families, down our street and across our communities as we dare to think of ourselves as God's ambassadors of reconciliation.