Thursday, October 9, 2008

Today’s text

Philippians 4:6-7

Never worry about anything; but tell God all your desires of every kind in prayer and petition shot through with gratitude, and the peace of God which is beyond our understanding will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.

Reflection

So tell me, Jesus, does your peace depend also on me? Must I do my part; bring all I am in prayer to you, knowing your heart is my home?

Is it then that peace will guard my heart?

As you know, this is a heart that needs much guarding. I am regularly impressed by how easily my sense of peace and stability is disrupted. Objections and misunderstandings come, small bumps in the byways of human discourse. But even small bumps can bring anger or defensiveness welling from my depths.

It’s an old pattern, and one not limited, I know, to me. But peace flees in such moments, and it precisely then that I most need the equanimity, the calm, the peace that rests in you.

Resting in you is the only way to this peace, and living this peace is the way that peace is prolonged.

So I come again to rest in you. Those words are such an abstraction. What, really, do they mean? Is it as simple as coming to a quiet place, like this, and naming the distresses of my heart, aware that you welcome each one with a love I cannot comprehend?

Is this resting knowing there is nothing to do, except to be here pouring out this soul--and listening to the silence for your gentle movements in my depths?

Is it even less, just being here with you?

It seems so, and the peace I know here is what I need to carry with me as I leave for the day. So help me touch this quiet space within me, and retreat to just this place when unruly passions well and foam that I may know and be your peace.

Your peace does not depend on outward circumstance, but inward recollection.

Pr. David L. Miller