“ Peace is not the absence of trouble but the presence of God amid trouble.”
I share a house with my beautiful wife, Lorna, and four little dudes who are twelve, nine, seven, and four. I currently have my AirPods in my ears and my AirPods Max on over them. Any parents with young kids can understand the reason for this without an explanation. But for all of you who may think this is a bit over the top and ridiculous, it is the only way I can get any semblance of peace and quiet to focus on this task of writing. The number of times a child says“ Mom” or“ Dad” in a day is incalculable.
The irony in this, of course, is that one of our sons blurted out from the back seat a few years ago,“ Can I get some peace and quiet, please?!” We’ d been exposed to his screams, bangs, crashes, and long indiscernible rants for years, and now he demanded peace and quiet! I don’ t blame him, though; peace is a hard thing to come by these days. Perhaps you don’ t have four boys with raised voices in the back seat, but there are other voices that shout at you, continually disturbing your peace. These are not just sonic intruders that steal our peace; they are intruders of the soul and mind. These modern intruders come in various forms. There’ s the incessant pinging of notifications from our phones, the endless stream of emails, the perpetual demands of work, and the constant barrage of news— often bad— that fills our screens. Social media, while connecting us in many ways, also serves as a source of comparison and judgment, eroding our sense of peace. Then there are the internal voices— our own thoughts, doubts, and fears— that can be just as loud and disruptive as any external noise.
There are many facets to peace and places where we need peace in our lives. There is an intrinsic relational peace, which Jesus was speaking to in his statement“ Blessed are the peacemakers.” That is peace between you and others, but to make peace one must first possess the ingredients of peace. We can’ t make peace with another person if we don’ t first have peace ourselves. Maybe your inner five-year-old is yelling from the back seat of your mind, Can I have some peace and quiet, please?! I know that has been the case for me. But this question assumes that there is someone who can hand us peace. It assumes that our lack of peace is someone else’ s problem to solve. There is faith and hope in that question, as well, because it suggests that there is a peace that can be possessed. Both assumptions are true, just not in the way we typically think. We carry some of the same ideas about peace as we do about joy, in that they are intangible concepts delivered to us by tangible possessions, people, or experiences. Unfortunately, the endless acquisition of those things typically gives us less peace, not more.
“ Peace is not the absence of trouble but the presence of God amid trouble.”
What is true, though, is that we do have someone who can give us peace; it just doesn’ t come through the person you may initially expect it to come from, and it doesn’ t come premade. God gives us the ingredients of peace. But we must make it. It’ s like receiving a recipe and all the necessary ingredients from a master chef, but we still need to do the
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