CHILDREN across the UK voted for ‘peace’ as the Oxford Children’s Word of the Year for 2025.
Andrea Quincey, from Oxford University Press, said that a key theme from the research was that the children were ‘calling for peace in response to current conflicts’.
Researchers found that children often directly referenced the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza when selecting peace as their word of the year.
For young people to recognise peace as a word that we should be striving towards, shows the vacuum of it in our society.
I wonder, when the children voted for peace to be their word of the year, what type of peace they envisaged?
Nelson Mandela famously said: ‘Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish, regardless of race, colour, creed, religion, gender, class, caste, or any other social markers of difference’.
Jeremiah 29 verse 7 says: ‘Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile’.
We are invited to seek the Shalom of the city – peace in the place where we live.
Shalom in Hebrew means more than just lack of war; it implies wholeness, flourishing, health, and total well-being.
God calls us to be agents of that kind of peace, even in places that feel like ‘exile’, or beyond hope.
What needs to happen to enable you to engage with seeking the peace and prosperity of the town in which you live?
This week’s contributor is Revd Savannah Bell, youth minister at Wokingham Baptist Church, which meets on Sundays at 10.30am.
For information, visit: wokinghambaptist.org.uk
