Peace Matters

“Peace, I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” John 14:27

I’ve decided to do one of my Bible Studies over again and I ‘accidently’ ordered the book instead of the study. I was disappointed at first because I rarely read an accompanying book with my study. But I decided to include the extra resource and I’m glad I did. The book and study are called Looking for Lovely, by Annie Downs. Since I lacked the bible study which provides Scripture inclusion and questions to ponder, I grabbed the one I had used back in 2018. One of the questions was ‘What are you afraid of right now?’ My 2018 answers included 3 fears I had at the time. It was a blessing to see that despite the fact that one fear had come to pass, we were fine because God was faithful. Two of the other fears of which I wrote never came to pass. In fact, one of them took an opposite route and ended up 100 times better than where it was 3 years ago. I immediately was blessed that I was forced to open up this book and ‘find my lovely’ for today. As I turned the page of my Bible study I found a piece of paper with Scripture that I had written for my dad the first day of radiation for his cancer. He carried it in his wallet for a few years and my mom found it after he died. Yesterday, was Father's Day and the little piece of paper was my lovely. My lovely for the day was the peace that note left in my heart…peace that even if our biggest fear becomes our reality that we are going to be fine because God is going to be faithful. I have peace that some of the fears that loom large in my mind live right there…in my mind instead of my reality.

PEACE MATTERS! Even if we grab it for merely a moment it releases all of the ‘unlovelies’ of our mind for a time. ‘It is not about your outside circumstances…It’s actually about your heart. It’s about being in a trusting position, a restful position, even when your world seems to be spinning’ Looking for Lovely, p. 14. In a world full of troubles, we need to search for peace… lasting peace…sustaining peace…peace not from this world but from Jesus.

Annie shares that those moments of God’s peace are moments that probably won’t change our circumstances but will change our hearts. Lovely moments that we collect and build upon give us strength for the next lovely moment and a desire to find it. But until the next one, we must hold on tightly to the one we find today. Peace matters! It reminds us that we have a choice to fight our fears and despair with peace, instead of allowing the chaos to define our lives.