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Each year an international think-tank publishes the 2016 Global Peace Index which measures the state of conflict in the world and includes a list of the top 10 most peaceful countries in the world. You won’t be surprised to learn that France didn’t make that list. It has suffered terrible attacks in recent months. Yesterday’s terrible murder of Father Jacques Hamel in his Church in Normandy has been claimed by Daesh. My stomach churned as I read the news. In the face of such atrocities how can we not despair and lose all hope for a peaceful world? The Index measured both peace internal and external to the country and found that 81 countries have actually become more peaceful in the past year, whilst the situation deteriorated in 79 others. Steve Killelea from the Index explained that it seeks to measure something he calls positive peace, factors that create and sustain peace such as: “acceptance of the rights of others”, “low levels of corruption”, “the free flow of information” and a “well-functioning government”. I like this approach because it’s an active rather than static concept to which people contribute as peace builders. A country with positive peace can more easily sustain the shocks that terror attacks can bring. It can do more than survive; it has reason to hope. Hope can be as gentle and yet as strong as a stream of water that breaks through the hardness of rock. This reminds me of when the Quran teaches us to have open hearts from whence hope can grow and spread positive peace: “Your hearts hardened like rocks, or even harder. For there are rocks from which rivers gush out. Others crack and release gentle streams” (2:74). If it’s hard to feel hope this morning then let’s consider that in the Index’s list of top 10 peaceful countries this year is Vietnam. Who would have thought 40 years ago that this country would be at peace both internally and externally? I was struck by Michele Obama who in her speech to the Democratic National Convention reflected on the home that she and her family have lived in these last eight years. A house that was built by slaves, now a home where she’s looked out on her two daughters playing on the lawn with their dogs and feels proud of a country that has changed enough to see a black President live and work in the White House. I hope that in years to come that the people from the Index’s war-torn and war weary countries will have their own White House moment.