PEACE

PEACE - writing for Five Minute Friday.  

A bit over two years ago, I felt to write a series of blog posts called Pathway to Peace.  I got the first one done and then life went pear-shaped, again, and writing became near impossible.   

When I started writing seriously again last year, because I needed simply to articulate what God was doing in my life, it wasn't about peace, but rather the inner turmoil that He was unearthing.  

Turns out, I need that series on peace even more than I knew, so I will attempt to write on that again.   

Turns out, in letting Him unearth and heal that inner turmoil, I am closer to real peace than I ever dreamt.  I've tasted some of it, and know it, at a depth I didn't know was possible, not for me.    It's a peace that comes from knowing something of the height and depth and length and breadth of His love for me, beyond head knowledge.

Peace is such an understated word in our language.   In the Bible, the word we translate peace is shalom, and it's so much more than we realise.   

It means wholeness and rightness and wellness in every part of our being, not just a lack of conflict, not just simple peace and quiet.  

But, to get to the wholeness, we need the conflict and we need to acknowledge the conflict that already exists within us.

Recently,  a friend sent me this and it's so true.  

Before I put pen to paper about that series on peace, many words came to me, starting with the letter P, that affect our peace, so I made up a picture of them and decided to explore them.   

Those words were power, patience, passion, person, performance, pray, platform.

But I forgot one.  And it's been a key to understanding why there has been a lack of shalom in my life.  

It's P for pretending.  

I've pretended for so long to be okay, to be at peace, to agree with people to keep the 'peace', to not be bothered by stuff, that my pain wasn't as important as someone else's, that I didn't have gaping wounds, in my soul and my spirit.   For so long I've stuffed down things that have stolen my peace - rejection, bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, shame, guilt, lies, regret and more besides.    And it's all been nicely fermenting, for years.  

The Lord has been challenging that pretence, unearthing the lies on which I've built my stoic outer self, exposing the turmoil.  And it's been hard, and horrible and so painful, but the reward is peace, shalom, in growing measure.

I've also been getting to know the Prince of Peace, the One who strangely calls me out of the boat, out of the familiar, what I've known and depended on, into the storm, to find Him in all His power and strength and gentleness.   And I'm finally learning to relax at His feet and just listen and learn and be.

  

To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven................

A time to tear, and a time to sew;

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time of war, and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1,7,8