Thursday 17 November 2022
Another Day Ends,
With The Sun Leaving It’s Last Light
In The Western Clouds,
As Fog Settles Over The Ice.
Is This Peace?
Psalms 116:7
Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
2 Thessalonians 3:16
Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways. The Lord be with all of you.
Words of Grace For Today
We humans seek many things in life. Our striving and competing creates no end of conflict and anguish for us and many others caught in our wake. We may think we, ourselves, do not create this conflict, especially if we’ve been privileged by birth or happenstance, yet it is part and parcel of each person. While we may deny the evidence of our own creation of chaos most of us live in the wake of others who create great conflict, violence, chaos, destruction, and suffering, some of it on our behalf and for us, some of it against us and for the benefit of others at our loss.
In the conflict and chaos we often seek peace, with others, with creation, with our Creator, and most often with ourselves.
Real peace is not something we can achieve. It is a gift.
Rev. Roger H. Black at Bethel Lutheran Church, Madison, WI provided this illustration for Luther Seminary’s God Pause for 13 November 2022 beginning with the words of the hymn When Peace Like a River and it’s refrain“It is well with my soul”:
An art contest asked painters to depict a perfect picture of peace. All kinds of entries with images of peace were painted, including such as that of the quiet of a lake on a windless summer day. The winner was surprising. The artist painted a tumultuous waterfall cascading down a rocky precipice. Stormy grey clouds threatened to explode with lightning, wind, and rain.
Amid it all a spindly tree clung to the rocks at the edge of the falls. And in that tree a little bird had built [its] nest. Content and undisturbed in [its] stormy surroundings, [it] rested on [its] eggs. [He/she] manifested peace that transcends all earthly turmoil.
(Note that in 90% of bird species the male sticks around for the nest building, incubation, feeding, and care of the young.)
While we may strive for this kind of peace amid the inescapable turmoil that is our lives, we cannot achieve it.
Not any more than that bird created the peace of that nest amid the turmoil of its surroundings. Birds nest. It seems to us a sign of peace, though it is instinctual life. Somewhere in that chaotic environment the two birds were going to establish a nest. Likewise, somewhere in our chaotic worlds we try to create a home for us and ours. Whether peace permeates our lives, in and out of that home is something we can and should strive for, but it is not something we can achieve. Not really.
That said the image of the nest amid the storm and tumult is a poignant reminder of what peace really is.
That kind of peace is given to us as a free gift.
Roger continues:
By God’s mercy we have this kind of peace in the midst of turmoil. “Our sin…is nailed to Christ’s cross.” We are made right with God through “his own blood shed for us.”
[The gift given to us is that]
No matter what happens to us, we are not dismayed. [Well, we need not be dismayed.] For we know [or more truthfully we can know] that “it is well with our soul.”
The truth is even when the peace that surpasses all understanding is given to us, sometimes we ignore it and proceed as if we did not have the greatest gift ever given to us.
So we do well to pray each day:
Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
And we do well to offer to ourselves and to others a reminder of God’s blessings:
May the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways. The Lord be with all of you.