peace: thanks, I don’t need a refund now

I was at our dining table visiting with a friend yesterday, briefly relaying my Advent adventures. I told her about my Hope week, and the various pictures of hope that had enriched it. What is your word this week?, she asked. Peace, I said. But it hasn’t been particularly peaceful.

And it hasn’t. I had all the intention of being spiritual and feeling peace this week in a variety of different ways, and it just didn’t happen. In fact, it was one of those weeks that I felt quite ugly. Nothing spectacular…but that was just it. I felt so human. So ordinary. So full of crud and pettiness. Distractions. Getting all worked up because my son can’t buckle his seatbelt in less than 10 minutes. (That would be accompanied by 10 minutes of the most irritating whining and fussing and “I can’t”ing ever to be heard…really, my response is totally justified.) Overwhelmed by the realization, once again, that I don’t understand EVERYthing about the universe and God and it is highly unlikely I ever will. You reach those vantage points in life when you look across, huffing and puffing and ready to exult in your stunning progress and…oh, well…way to climb two vertical feet. Go me.

How does God ever put up with us?

On the way back from the grocery store I was filing my complaint…I had signed up for the Advent Experience, you understand, and last week was wonderful, God, but this week? Well, perhaps you should consider issuing a refund, because Peace week has been less than satisfactory.

He gently reminded me the week wasn’t over. I wasn’t too sure what He could pull out for me in the 7 hours remaining, but I agreed. And it hadn’t been too bad, really, I reasoned. I had come to a new, rather significant understanding of peace. But that was in my head, and I wanted to know it in my heart too.

We watched The Nativity Story tonight. It was quite good. No new amazing insight, but it was really great to spend a couple hours focused on the wonder and beauty of Jesus’ birth.

It all hit me after the kids were in bed: My ugly week demonstrated exactly why Jesus came. Exactly what it meant for Him to bring me Peace. I had been so wrong, had so many failures, so much humanness. So I had a sob session right there on the couch in front of the Christmas tree. Because that yuckiness is why He came. Jesus is our Peace. Our perfection. Our completeness. God puts up with us because He doesn’t see it, the ugliness. Jesus covered it up.

And I don’t have to worry about it either. It is in Jesus that I find my Peace, my perfection, my completeness…not in what I do or think or say. There is such rest in that. I don’t need to prove my faith by being “spiritual“, to make sure God and me and everyone else knows how serious I am about things. I can just let Jesus do the proving.

He agreed to be my Peace because I don’t have any.

That is too amazing.

peace = salvation

Peace, I learned last night, is the word that, in Bible times, was most closely associated with the concept of salvation.

Which is most likely why Paul, in his letters, opens by saying “peace and grace to you” — ‘peace’ was the word Jews associated with salvation, while ‘grace’ was the word the Gentiles used.

random pieces of peace

Knowing God better results in more peace

2 Peter 1.2 – May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.

We lack nothing when it comes to our faith potential — we are the ones who limit ourselves

2 Peter 1.3 – By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.

The message of the early church? Jesus brings peace

Acts 10.36 – You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

Peace, an intangible, an abstract and formless concept, is made visible, concrete, embodied in Jesus

Micah 5.4-5 – He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be their peace.

Justice and righteousness produce peace (and I thought I was done with my justice/righteousness study)

Isaiah 32.16-17 – Justice will dwell in the desert and righteousness live in the fertile field. The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever.

War and Peace

(This is basically me regurgitating a thought Ehud Garcia shared in my Biblical Hebrew class a couple weeks ago…but I thought it was interesting enough to pass on, so here it is.)

So the other day I talked about what peace means. So I thought it might also be nice to talk about war. War, afterall, is always a nice thing to talk about.

War, in the Bible, is lechem (or lecham). It refers to fighting and battle and…well,…warring. But the word also has another meaning: bread. Like what you eat. In fact, as a verb, lecham means to eat.

What has one got to do with other? Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s just the weird quirks of language. But Ehud passed on what was once suggested to him, which is that War is Always About Bread.

And it is. War is always about bread. Ie. land, wealth, power, natural resources, oil. The aggressor wants the other person’s “bread”. They aren’t content with what they have, they want more. They war because they are hungry for something they don’t current possess. They are not satisfied with what they have.

If ever there was a season of the year that we want more, its Christmas. Speaking for myself, at least. I find myself trying to come up with things to want, since people are asking. There is a certain amount of stuff I will get and I feel the need to make the most of the opportunity. I have been more or less content the previous 11 months, but now that its Christmas, it turns out there are THINGS I MUST HAVE!

It is funny to me that we’re all running around talking about “peace” this time of year, while simultaneously consuming — cookies, kitchen gizmos, “safe plastic” sippy cups, fancy cheese, fashion and beauty products, Hannah Montana dolls — like crazies.

Peace is being content, being satisfied with what we have. I need this peace all throughout the year, but especially now.

pEACE

I really liked the idea of having a Peace Week in Advent. Mostly because I’m an introvert and so for me, living out peace means quietly reading a book all curled up in a blanket, probably with some good tea on a table next to you. And I think that I thought if I had a Peace Week I might get to do a lot of reading for a week. Clearly I had a mental lapse and forgot that I have three children, who are not yet at a stage in life that allows for mass quantities of this sort of thing.

Since selecting “Peace” for this week, I have come to find that peace, in the Biblical sense, does not mean “quietly reading a book”. The disappointment from that realization was quickly overcome because peace means something way, way bigger and more exciting than that.

Peace, shalom, in the Old Testament, comes from a root that means “completion” and “fulfillment”. Other derivatives of this root mean peace, perfect, whole, and reward.

I like that Jesus came to bring us “no more fighting” and “let’s all just get along”. I like that He wants to gives us personally “calmness, a feeling of rest, freedom from stress”. I like the warm coziness of feeling safe and secure because of my faith. But this is the fluff of peace, not the essence of it.

The core of peace is that wholeness. Its a story of people who are lacking something and who, because of the advent of Christ, now have it. It is upon this peace that the other aspects of peace are built upon.

Those who have accepted this peace, this wholeness, this salvation God brings us through Jesus still have a lot of rough edges. Speaking for myself at least, what I say and do, how I think about people and situations could all still use a heavy dose of that peace, because the way I live my life is far from what it should be. But I am confident in that core of peace. I know, at the heart of it, Jesus has completed me; it just has yet to make its way to the ugly edges of my life.