January 16, 2006 2:22 PM
The peace that passes understanding
Elizabeth Elliott, whose daily devotionals I often recommend and to which you can subscribe here, today offers these thoughts on finding peace no matter your outer circumstances:
To make peace with a country or a person or God requires a transaction. To have peace, as people sometimes say, unless it is merely the sense of well-being that commonly goes with getting what you want, must mean that a transaction has taken place. One's will, along with everything else, has been offered up. Peace is the divine answer to our Yes, Lord.Colossians 3:15 suggests that the peace of Christ is the "arbiter" of our hearts, ruling out all faithless response to trouble, all distress, anxiety, fretfulness, frustration, and resentment. It establishes order. Those who accept the grace of this gift know tranquillity which can withstand all assaults, a stillness unbroken by the world's noise, and a repose in the midst of intense activity--repose which a nerve-racked world cannot possibly give. For only Christ himself, who slept in the boat in the storm and then spoke calm to the wind and waves, can stand beside us when we are in a panic and say to us Peace. It will not be explainable. It transcends human understanding. And there is nothing else like it in the whole wide world.
As a writer, I am often called to bring to light things people would rather remain in the dark. I've had to learn to look beyond the opinions of others to evaluate my actions by the absence or presence of that peace. When I have strayed from God's will, he has been faithful to stir up enough anxiety in me that I cannot run and hide - I must repent and apologize to those I have wronged. But when I have simply been obedient, no matter what others think, I am filled with a peace that cannot be broken - the peace that passes all understanding, mine and theirs.
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