Peace

Luke 2:14

Assuming you’re reading this on December 23, the sun will set at 4:27 PM tonight, making today the third shortest day of the year. The lack of sunlight has always made winters hard for me, and when I was in college, I had such a poor grasp on my mental health that all I could heave up to God were deep sighs, tears, and begging that he would take my pain away. During those dark days, I held tightly onto Jesus’ words in John 14: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” What more could I ask for? I had in Jesus a peace that transcended my pain. It didn’t make my fears disappear, but it gave me a place (or more accurately, a person) to bring them.

And this is how we see the angels herald Jesus’ arrival to our broken planet: “peace on earth.” This is it. This is The Seed, the King, the Servant, the Savior who will make all things right and finally bring everlasting peace. Through Jesus’ perfect life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection, all peoples can be made right with God, and God’s new creation of peace will be ushered in.

Another passage I clung to in college was Mark 4. Jesus is able to bring the raging storm I’m in to peace, but even if He doesn’t, I can remember this: Jesus, who is far bigger than the storm, is in the boat with me.

Prayer:

Where do you see Christ’s peace now? Where do you long for it to still come?

Question to consider:

Jesus, give me peace. Help me to feel it, and help me to trust you even when I don’t.