For Christ himself has
brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his
own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us
(Ephesians 2:14 NLT).
As a young woman of 13, my pastor gave me a verse at one of
our Sunday School events. I was not
saved at the time so it really did not hold a great deal of significance to me
until I met Jesus some 20 years later.
The verse was:
Peace I leave with
you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27 NKJV).
What became significant to me was the fact that there is a
peace that the world offers which is not the same peace that we have in Christ,
to which Paul is referring. The peace of
the world is fragile and subject to the whims of human nature. Whether it is the peaceful atmosphere of a
home that disappears in the heat of an argument or the peace of a country that
is suddenly catapulted into terror by the invasion of another country, the
peace of the world is not stable.
In contrast, the peace that Christ accomplished at the cross
is a peace between God and us. That
peace is not subject to human whim or wars, to arguments or disputes, or any
other outside force that would otherwise be able to topple the tenuous
condition we think of as peace in this world.
It is a peace to which we can anchor our hope because no matter what
happens in this life, we have the calm assurance that the wall of hostility
between God and us has been abolished.
When we understand the basis of this peace from God, we will be able to
see our life through the lens of eternity and it will look like this:
For our present troubles are small and won’t
last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and
will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we
can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the
things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last
forever (2 Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT).
With a peace like that, nothing rocks our boat, which is a
good thing since so many signs point to the fact that we are in the end of the
age. One of the promises that God gives
concerning that period of time is:
“Once again I will
shake not only the earth but the heavens also.” This means
that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things
will remain (Hebrews 12:26b-27 NLT).
I will set my heart and mind on the immutable peace of God
rather than seeking peace here on earth that is subject to circumstances so
that no matter what comes my way today, I will not be moved.
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