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This hasn’t exactly been a year of peace for me. Or, as the Hebrew word shalom describes it, it hasn’t been a year of flourishing or wholeness. It’s been the opposite, actually. A year of a lot of brokenness, stripping, disappointment. A year full of fear, anxiety, depression, a floundering of questions: why am I here? what am I doing? who am I?
Yet, here we are, at the end of the year, and He’s whispering peace. He’s speaking to me of wholeness, of rejoicing, and of newness to come. And I’m balking at how newness can come out of so much…oldness. So much ancient history and repeated patterns of beliefs, thoughts—lies dominating the landscape of my heart, like road-markers of mileage repeating themselves, a never-ending roundabout of little green signs that I’m tired of seeing: 435. 435. 435. 435.
From there to “then”
It’s felt like we’ve been getting nowhere, most of the time. But our God is everywhere, and time doesn’t impede His forward motion. It may look repetitive, but it’s the tiniest fragments that are clicking themselves into gear, over and over and over again—until suddenly, words like “then” and “new” and “rejoice” are the words jumping off the page, instead of “before” and “old” and “broken.”
Most of my year has been spent in the prophetic books of the Old Testament. I’ve been diving deep into words that speak of the future when my life has been like a blast from the past: old wounds, old words, old days. The words “will be” have been the metronome ticking away, scratching incessantly under the weight of my pen in the few journals I’ve written my way through. But in the last week, I’ve found myself drawing a little box around every use of the word “then” in the final prophetic book I’m thumbing through, Daniel. On the surface, such a small word, such a meaningless word, but it’s like God’s way of saying to Daniel, to me—I’ve been connecting the dots this whole time. Just keep going. One day at a time. Then, you’ll see my work. Now you don’t see it. But then is coming, better than that: it’s already here.
Peace is a “then” I’ve overlooked this year.
You can’t have peace without first knowing some sort of chaos, without first being plunged into circumstances that make it so incredibly apparent that you need peace, you need something to make all things right again. And, as the sermon I listened to ended this morning, the final words were: Peace is a person. Peace is God with us. Peace is Jesus.
A story I’ve often meditated on this year—because it was the only story that I could feel shaking in my circumstances—is the story of Jesus calming the storm. Jesus had grown very quiet in the stern; He had fallen asleep during a major storm that was threatening the disciples lives. For a moment, perhaps, the disciples had forgotten He was even there; they had reverted back to all their seafaring training to triage of the situation: there’s a storm; save yourselves.
But then they realized they couldn’t. They couldn’t make peace with this storm. Something told them Jesus could. And before saying a word about their faltering faith, Jesus stood up. The Prince of Peace spoke the very word He fulfilled from Isaiah: Peace. Be still. The very essence of who He was to us controlled nature. And the disciples fear only grew as they said to themselves, Who is this, that even the waves and wind obey His voice?
And yet we don’t. We let our emotions, our feelings of brokenness and pain, speak louder than Jesus’ own character as the Prince of Peace, gently urging us to have faith in the peace that He brought, to be still in the face of a storm given only so that you can know Him as this peace, the only peace that can make us stand in grace, reconciled to God, justified by faith, and rejoicing in all circumstances.
This is why He came.
This is Advent, the coming of peace to reign over our hearts and our world. We groan in the waiting, but let us not forget that even so, right now, His peace is ours for the taking; the Prince of Peace is ours, Immanuel, God with us, rescuing, redeeming, and rejoicing over us in love, not because of what we’ve done but because of all He’s done to make us His, forever.
“Peace. Be still.” The Prince of Peace has come to make us flourish, to make us whole again.
the prince of peace
Immanuel
God with us
entering the chaos
to bring peace to us
Not with things or gifts or kings
but a baby as an offering
to give us life
This is why He came
And this is why we rejoice:
I’m made one with God
wholeness like a flood
full of peace again
without fear, I stand
covered in grace
the prince of peace who came
to make all things well
with a finite faith
in a God who is stronger than my doubt
and all my fears
I’m changed
my belief is weak but His grip is strong
He who defeated death
has victory in me
This is why He came
And this why we rejoice:
I’m made one with God
wholeness like a flood
full of peace again
without fear, I stand
covered in grace
the prince of peace who came
to make all things new
has made me new
He’s made me whole
my heart can sing, with hope
the prince of peace
brought peace to me
This is why He came
And this is why we rejoice
