Peace

peace: noun, interjection, verb, peaced, peac⋅ing.
freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety, an obsession, etc.;

tranquillity; serenity.

The word PEACE has come to light in recent days...as if it is the word that God has for our family to focus on this coming year. It has been highlighted in conversations, emails and miscellaneous findings along the way.

And so I sit up and take notice. Take note. Consider.

For who knows what the immediate future holds?

Well, He does.

I sometimes struggle with fear...especially the fear of losing family on this side of Heaven. And other things. The countless possibilities of what could go wrong way too often are given a foothold in the door to my mind...and once that sneaky foot is in the door, the thoughts attached to it can usher themselves in so quickly, prop their feet up and make themselves at home.

But if and when I choose to turn on the 'light', they are quickly ushered out. The "light" is a particular remembrance that dispells the fear with it's intensity...similar to what happens when the can't-see-the-hand-in-front-of-your-face blackness of a room is pierced with radiant sunbeams streaming through the tiniest crack in the wall. It makes all the difference.

How I view God is everything to do with this process of light peircing the dark, love penetrating the fear. A conversation between a man and God from a favorite story/book of mine (The Shack, by William P. Young) might better serve to illustrate what I am talking about:

It was the voice of Papa again, especially gentle and tender. "You really don't understand yet. You try to make sense of the world in which you live based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality. It is like looking through the tiny knothole of hurt, pain, self-centeredness, and power, and believing you are on your own and insignificant. All these contain powerful lies. You see pain and death as ultimate evils and God as the ultimate betrayer, or perhaps, at best, as fundamentally untrustworthy. You dictate the terms and judge my actions and find me guilty."

"The real underlying flaw in your life, Mackenzie, is that you don't think I am good. If you knew I was good-and that everything-the means, the end, and all the processes of individual lives-is all covered by my goodness, then while you might not always understand what I am doing, you would trust me. But you don't. "

"I don't?" asked Mack, but it was not really a question. It was a statement of fact and he knew it. The others seemed to know it too and the table remained silent.

Sarayu spoke. "Mackenzie, you cannot produce trust just like you cannot 'do' humility. It either is or is not. Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me."

Again, their was silence, and finally Mack looked up at Papa and spoke. "I don't know how to change that".

"You can't, not alone. But together we will watch that change take place. For now, I just want you to be with me and discover that our relationship is not about performance or you having to please me. I'm not a bully, not some self-centered demanding little deity insisting on my own way. I am good, and I desire only what is best for you. You cannot find that through guilt or condemnation or coercion, only through a relationship of love. And I do love you." (italics and bold face mine)

Ahhhh......I just LOVE that part. It was so good to type it out and absorb it (even with the babies fussing behind me!!)

PEACE.

It comes from knowing I am loved....deeply, unconditionally, purely, without judgement, no strings attached, solely because I exist.

It is my wish for you, and for me, that we realize that Love, which gives us a deeper peace than what lies on the surface of our sunny smiles and 'fine, how are you?" replies to those who casually ask how we are. May 2010 hold that in it's seconds, minutes, days, weeks and months...

Happy New Year, my friend!