Peace in the midst of chaos

                                 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

October 21, 2020

Eph. 3:4-12; Psalm 122; Luke 12:39-48

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Verse 7 of our Psalm for today says, “Peace be within your walls * and quietness within your towers.” Ha! I thought when I read this. Peace? God, you are funny. Home life is slightly organized chaos while we all try to work from home and educate children in the midst of a pandemic. Life in our wider communities seems unstable and worrisome as cases are rising again in so many places, including my own state. Our national life seems to be in turmoil as there is bitter division and deep fears as we approach Election Day. And the whole world is still in the grips of a pandemic.


And that list did not include any of the challenges and difficulties that were around before we went into quarantine, like systemic racism or climate change or the ever widening gap between rich and poor. Peace? Really God, I want to say, You have got to be kidding me. How can we possibly find peace at a time like this.


But blessedly I have some wise people in my life whose voices intervene in moments like these. “Molly,” they say, “Take a deep breath. Pause. Reflect. You are getting yourself in a frantic state that is not actually going to help anything. Remember that story about Mary and Martha? You are doing your Martha thing. Time to find your Mary. Sit. Rest. Trust.” Ah. Right.


And I think of that oft quoted wisdom pictured above.




Oh, I think, maybe that is what God means. “Peace be within our walls” is not about some magical other world where nothing bad happens. It is not about all our present difficulties just disappearing at the snap of a finger. It is about us finding peace in our souls in the midst of it all. It is about us holding on to that peace, that strength, that resilience to get us through this time.




C.S. Lewis writes of this same kind of experience in A Grief Observed. He writes, “When I lay these questions [of why his wife died or why he is suffering] before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’”


In the midst of everything that is going in our world, we, like Lewis, are given a gift of peace that we may not fully understand, but here is the important thing for us to remember - it is God's peace. It is bigger than all of us, bigger than the things of the world, bigger than our fear.


It is not a peace of easy answers or simple solutions. It is the peace that comes from letting go. The peace that comes when we stop trying to figure everything out. It is the peace that comes when we choose trust over fear. When we chose love over indifference. When we chose possibility over certainty.


That is what God offers us. A gift of peace. It is not a gift that will always come easily to us. It is far too easy for us to be sucked into the 24 hour news cycle or find ourselves catastrophizing all the what ifs of tomorrow or next week or next year.


And so we need to keep up the practices that help us slow down. That center us. That remind us we are beloved of God and that we can indeed find peace amidst the chaos. We need time for prayer. Time to nourish our bodies. Time for rest. Time for laughter. Time for that which brings us joy. Time for that which restores our souls and connects us to the grace that is the “foundation of everything.”


The world may seem frantic and harried. There are times when it can seem like the fear is going to get the best of us. But it need not. We have a choice. We have an invitation, an opportunity to experience the beautiful gift of knowing the peace of God in our hearts. It is my prayer that in the midst of all the challenges and the struggles of these days we remember that the peace is not contingent on what happens out there. It can always be found in our hearts, when we are connected to God and each other. Amen.