Sunday night late—the stoop seems as good a place as any to ponder.
Big things, I always choose.  Tonight, all I see is the moon, and it is big enough.
Full, bright, and orange it was when earlier I stood with my love, taken with wonder.
Now murky and circled with clouds, it only warns of rain to come in the soon dawning day.  Monday with rain.

How does the joy and wonder turn so suddenly to foreboding?
Where does the elation go when I am overcome with dread?
It is not only the moon and not only the night that bring the sudden turnaround.
Still.  The questions remain.
How so suddenly changed?
Where can I go to retrieve the joy?
Where is the queue to reclaim peace for my soul?

I wrote the words a year ago.  They were never meant to share.  Not with anyone.

Two nights ago, he called me—the man who is the rock.  No, really.  The Rock of Gibraltar.  Or, so I have believed.

His close friends, two of them, have died in the last week.  Another, even closer to him, is in the terrifying uncertainty of awaiting the doctor’s report.

He is shaken.  Shaken.

We talked for some time and agreed on this certainty at the end of the conversation: We know the Peace-giver.  In our prayers and gratitude, He gives His peace that we cannot understand.

The Prince of Peace gives Himself.  

The Prince of Peace gives Himself. Share on X

His words, fear not, are not meant as a command to be followed religiously, in fear of offense.  They are the assurance of a loving parent—a promise of safety, of wholeness, of perfect rest.  

They are words to comfort and not to condemn.

And, as children are wont to do, we forget.  We do.  

And, like a Father, He reminds again.  And again.  

His words are fresh every time.  His arms of protection cover—every time.

Peace.  I am leaving it with you.  Not the kind of peace the world offers, brokered by the powerful and ensured by weapons and threats.  No, my peace is a gift to hold in your heart, where no man and no circumstance can plunder it.  (John 14:27)

Where anger rules, peace dissolves.  Where terror dwells, peace cannot live.  Where worry spreads, peace is no more.

Does it mean our hearts will never be touched by these things?  By no means.

Fear may pass through, anger may swell up, anxiety may worm its way in.

But His peace reigns.  Just as Peter, when we begin to sink beneath the waves, we remember who rules those waves.  

As we walk through the valley of the shadow, we recall who waits for us over there.

You know—over there.  Where our home—our real home—is being made ready for us.

Here is the queue to reclaim peace—in exactly the same place it was the last time.

We’re next in line.  Every time.

Peace.

Shalom.

 

 

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.  There is no such thing.
(C.S. Lewis ~ British theologian/author ~ 1898-1963)

 

 

 

 

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2017. All Rights Reserved.