The prophet Micah teaches us both the promise and the responsibility of reconciliation. Chapter 4 says that God will "mediate" disputes between peoples, "disarm" the nations, and bring justice and "allocation of scare resources." God will judge between great peoples and decide between nations far and wide:

They shall hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall lift no sword against nation, and never again will they learn to make war. Every one shall live beneath the shade of their own vine and fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.

Chapter 6, verse 8, reminds us of our role in bringing about this "peaceable kingdom."

For what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love constantly, and to walk humbly with your God.

These three requirements are one way to envision our task of reconciliation or peacemaking on three levels. We picture them as three radiating circles.

• The first level, the personal, coincides with learning to walk humbly with God;
  
• The second, or inter-personal, level is the one at which we do most of our work, where we learn to love constantly;
  
• In the outermost circle, at the transpersonal level, we are called to move beyond our closer community to the larger world community where we act on behalf of the justice claims of all our brothers and sisters.

On the following pages are some examples of how that task is lived out on each of the levels and how each level is connected and interwoven with the others.