Sep 25, 2018
Now may the Lord of
peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. 2Thess 3:16
The only way to gain
lasting peace is to know personally The One who has it to give.
A mom just wanted a few minutes of peace & quiet, so
when nobody was looking, she snuck in the closet of her bedroom and sat in the
dark. In the midst of that room, she
thought she would enjoy some quiet time away from the noise and craziness of
her home. What she found was quiet
noise. Instead of hearing the kids’
behaviors and discussions, she started thinking about all the damage her kids
might be doing. Instead of seeing what
her husband was doing (or not doing) to help, she started imagining him
sleeping on the couch and ignoring the fire drill happening around him. The list she had been working on only kept
growing in her mind, and the peace she had hoped to find was further drowned
out by the busyness of her life. Five
minutes of escape turned into five minutes of tension. She left the closet in worse condition than
when she went in.
That’s exactly the way false peace is pursued in this
world. We equate peace with escape, but
escape only delays the problems and shortens the deadlines. You don’t find rest by escaping, you find
anxiety, tension, and larger problems.
If you want to find peace, you need to do it another way.
Tommy was playing football with his friends in an abandoned
lot of the city, when the punt sent the ball sailing to an area full of
trash. As he navigated through the junk
toward the ball, Tommy ran across an old metal box that looked like a money
container. Shaking the box, he heard what
sounded like coins and maybe bills inside, so he tried to pry it open. When that didn’t work, Tommy tried finding
keys or objects to help him open the box, to no avail. Finally, the boy noticed a name inscribed on
the box. He pulled out a phone book, and
called the one name that matched it in the white pages. The person answered, and as Tommy described
the box, the man on the other end of the phone excitedly described the
box. They ended up meeting, and the man
opened the box to reveal not coins or money, but several items of jewelry and a
large diamond. Apparently someone had
stolen the box out of the man’s car, but was unable to open it and dumped it in
the trash. Tommy’s reward was a crisp
$100 bill for the find. Tommy discovered
the best way to gain the reward was to find the owner of the box.
The only way to find peace is to find its owner as well.
Peace doesn’t come from outward experiences. Peace comes from inward calmness. You can have peace in the most chaotic of
circumstances, and have anxiety in the quietest of settings. The One who owns peace is the God of heaven,
because He is the only one who controls all outcomes. So to find peace, don’t look for the absence of
noise or challenge … look for the Presence of God.
Stop using escapes to create your peace – it doesn’t
last, and often creates more problems. Find your peace by going to the source… Jesus Himself.
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