Where Is Peace?

Are you looking for peace? What kind of peace do you want? Do want peace between countries, so that the news won't be filled with who is blowing up cities and the people in them?

I've heard it said that the days of Rome were peaceful times. But if you look closely, you'll see that they used military force whenever and wherever it was needed in order to maintain that peace. I'm sure there were many who didn't think of the Romans as peacemakers.

Right now, we do not live in a time of peace. There are so many groups who want to see the great and mighty countries of the world fall so that their smaller regimes can prosper, and maybe even bring about a religious end to the world. On the one hand, we have leaders saying the current treaty will bring peace, while other leaders warn us of the ulterior motive of the treaty signers. Do you find peace in this? I don't.

So many people are looking for peace to come from their fellow man. That type of peace will always be elusive because man is finicky. He can't even trust himself. Where I do find peace is not from outside sources, but from God.

In recent months I've heard the song "It Is Well With My Soul" more times than I care to count. Each time I sang it or heard it I became more choked up over the song. You can look up both the song and the songwriter here and here. In the midst of complete sorrow and downturns in life Horatio G. Spafford wrote the words to this song. The peace Spafford held onto and wrote about didn't come from his life experiences. In fact, what happened to him would have put most people on tranquilizers nowadays. The kind of peace Spafford leaned on focused on scripture like Psalm 30:11 where God turns wailing into dancing and mourning into joy.

That's what I'm looking for...joyful dancing before God in spite of what is happening in my life. That's the peace I want. Not the temporary peace that comes from a signed treaty which can be wadded up and tossed into the wind at a moment's notice.

And how do I do that? By keeping my focus on God and the fact that the ultimate victory is His. Nothing this life can throw at us, looking at Spafford again, is greater than the peace we can find in God. I just have to keep my eyes on God's victory and off my own shaky path.