How am I finding you this morning? Worried? Stressed? Or somewhere in a place of contentment? I know such is crazy time with our to-do lists SO LONG and the suffering around our world at such a terrible place.
In all of this, what I most want to offer you today is peace. Peace: a state of tranquility or quiet.
But how you might wonder?
Well, I know this for sure, peace is a word we frequently use, and because of that it's easy to believe that peace looks like perfection. The right place. The right time. The right people all living together in harmony.
Many of us use this idea of peace as permission as to why we don’t act. When it’s the right time, we say, we will. (And that time never comes).
One of my favorite scriptures about peace comes from the prophetic text of Jeremiah, chapter 29. When the nation of Israel was in a exiled land they were advised to “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
Jeremiah's words here dispels this any sort of "wait till the right time" then you'll have peace mentality. Jeremiah wanted his listeners to seek the “peace” of the city where they were, even if it not where they wanted to be.
And by peace, I don’t believe he’s talking about contentment. Or being a doormat to injustice. (For there was so much not well in Jeremiah's purview just as there is ours). Instead Jeremiah encouraging peace from human-to-human connection. Seeing people, loving people right where you are.
Let me add this: several years ago, I found myself living in a city I did not want to live in. I had a horrible attitude about it. I exuded negative energy. And as much as I said with my mouth that I wanted to make peace with my circumstances, there was no way possible for this to happen. I isolated myself. My heart wasn’t open to seeing my neighbors. I wished I could be anywhere but there.
But slowly, I learned this lesson: when you pray for your surroundings to prosper (even if you don't like them) there’s hope for you to prosper in them.
Peace-making is always full of surprises!
How is there peace calling your name this week right where you are?
XO
Elizabeth
