The Peace of God

“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). Sometimes it seems like any peace that God offers us could not logically enter our current frame of mind or have room to fit in our hearts already bursting with chaotic, roiling emotions. The wars raging in our hearts and minds are too furious and too bitter and have wounded us too often and too deeply for peace of any kind to gain any kind of traction. There is no peace that could possibly make the cruel tragedies we have faced make sense. There is no peace that could possibly justify the agonies we have endured. There is no peace that could possibly possibly pull us out of the crushing blackness of the bottomless pit of despair in which we have found ourselves. At least, from our mortal perspective, such a peace seems utterly impossible. But the peace of God passeth all understanding. I think part of the problem is when we hear something like "the peace of God" we imagine ourselves in some silent, idyllic meadow, or strumming a harp way up in the clouds. In other words, we imagine that if God were to grant us His peace, it would mean plucking us from this chaotic maelstrom we call life and sheltering us in the palms of His hands, like a baby bird or a flickering flame, keeping out all pain and sorrow and unpleasantness. We may even feel guilty that even though we are striving to keep the Commandments and honor our covenants and perform acts of service, we are drowning in chaos and misery and confusion. We may assume that in our failures we have turned God against us and that He no longer loves us, or He's forgotten about us, because if He knew or cared, then it makes absolutely no sense why He would leave us in the fire to burn. But the peace of God is not about plucking us out of the flames and whisking us away to safety, but rather, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, allowing us to endure the heat without becoming consumed by it. The peace of God is not about keeping us out of the lion's den, but making sure that we don't get torn apart by the lions. When we're on our very last nerve but somehow manage to not snap, that is the peace of God. When we're hanging off of the cliff by one finger but somehow don't fall, that is the peace of God. When we're unicycling down a tightrope juggling chainsaws and flaming bowling balls and it doesn't all end in a fiery explosion, that is the peace of God. The peace of God "shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." We may be in a heartbreaking situation, but the peace of God through Christ Jesus will hold the pieces of our heart together until they have time to knit back together in love. We may be in an insane situation, but the peace of God through Christ Jesus will hold the pieces of our mind together until they are able to reassemble themselves back together in greater understanding and wisdom. After Peter was afraid and fell into the sea, he walked back to the boat on the water, arm in arm with the Savior. The storm and the boisterous wind and the terrifying waves did not go away, but Jesus was able to help Peter hold the pieces of his faith together until they got back to safety. The peace of God is not only waiting for us in the serene meadow with the babbling brook and the motes drifting lazily in the sunlight. The peace of God is with us in the foxholes when shells are exploding all around us and we can't hear ourselves think and we're up to our eyeballs in screaming, full-blown, breathing into a paper bag, fight or flight panic. When we can't keep it together, Christ is there with His peace to keep our minds and our hearts from fully shattering, and though we can't imagine it, and are afraid to believe it, and dare not hope it, He will ensure that we survive this and though we have to army crawl under the barbed wire through the mud past the landmines all the while taking enemy fire and bleeding out with the stench of death in our nostrils, we will eventually make it to that sunlit meadow, so quiet you can even hear the sound of a wild snail eating, and God Himself will wash away all of the mud and the blood and wipe away all our tears and heal our broken hearts and our broken minds and then, then will we understand the peace of God and we will see that all things have worked together for our good and that in the end our suffering mattered and meant something, meant, in fact, everything.