With all the challenges and conflicts in this World, it is easy to wonder about Jehovah-shalom, the God of peace. Reading the Old Testament can add to the confusion because there was warfare aplenty from the beginning of time.
But God's peace is not the absence of war; rather it is the peace which transcends all of life's horrors and humankind's stunning capacity to harm one another from warring nations to warring households.
This is what I think that means: God does not exercise authority over the World because that would remove free will and we might be very obedient automatons but without freedom we would be slaves rather than a child of the household of God. But God does exercise control over the safety and well-being of our soul, our core being, "the person we are when we are alone."* We alone can harm our own souls when we are willful and chasing all the World's lies.
God, who knows intimately our every flaw and error, still loves us utterly, never more than right now nor less than right now. If my life here ends, God catches me in the next life, the ever after life. No one and nothing can deny me the love of God, the acceptance of God, the plan God has for me--not in the here and now nor in the life ever after.
When I look at the problems in this universe and the very small part over which I have been given some measure of authority to serve, it would be so easy to despair.
But God has all that. It is just my job to show up and embrace that peace which surpasses human understanding but is wholly within my grasp by the power of the God of Peace.
Jehovah-shalom, thank You for Your peace in my life. Help me to hold it passionately to my heart as life's challenges rock my world. AMEN
*Margery Allingham's character Cannon Avril in Tiger in the Smoke
But God's peace is not the absence of war; rather it is the peace which transcends all of life's horrors and humankind's stunning capacity to harm one another from warring nations to warring households.
This is what I think that means: God does not exercise authority over the World because that would remove free will and we might be very obedient automatons but without freedom we would be slaves rather than a child of the household of God. But God does exercise control over the safety and well-being of our soul, our core being, "the person we are when we are alone."* We alone can harm our own souls when we are willful and chasing all the World's lies.
God, who knows intimately our every flaw and error, still loves us utterly, never more than right now nor less than right now. If my life here ends, God catches me in the next life, the ever after life. No one and nothing can deny me the love of God, the acceptance of God, the plan God has for me--not in the here and now nor in the life ever after.
When I look at the problems in this universe and the very small part over which I have been given some measure of authority to serve, it would be so easy to despair.
But God has all that. It is just my job to show up and embrace that peace which surpasses human understanding but is wholly within my grasp by the power of the God of Peace.
Jehovah-shalom, thank You for Your peace in my life. Help me to hold it passionately to my heart as life's challenges rock my world. AMEN
*Margery Allingham's character Cannon Avril in Tiger in the Smoke
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