Peace | English Devotion | NHFCSG

Peace

 "Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.'" (Luke 2:13-14) 

Peace is a noble aspiration at any time. When the world is at war, or when wars seem to have settled down. 

When you find yourself in battle with someone else, or when you are feeling pretty good about your relationships. When you are confident that you are on the same side as God, and when you're not so sure. 

There is no time when it is not good to pursue peace. But peace is so much more than the absence of conflict. 

Maybe you can lay your head on your pillow tonight and thank God that nobody beat you up today, but that is not the same thing as experiencing peace. 

If a husband and wife get tired of shouting at each other and slip into a mutually agreed-upon icy indifference, that's not peace. 

In Hebrew the word for peace is "shalom," a kind of well-wishing that says it all: may you be healthy, whole, complete.

May you know where you fit in the universe, and may you have tranquility in that. Augustine said that peace is "the tranquility of order." 

When you know where you fit into God's world--that you are more than a beast, but less than God--that is the sense of order that brings tranquility.

 And so we wish for peace at Christmas, which includes the hope that somehow fewer people will be killed by bullets or hunger or some other disease. 

But it goes beyond that. Christmas shalom is the confidence that when God's favor, his undeserved grace, rests on us, we will know a peace that goes beyond understanding. 

The peace that comes because Christ came into the world and put things in order, beginning with his birth, completed in his sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection. 

 

Prayer for today: Dear God, let your favor rest on me, and let me stand in the peace that Christ has made possible