ONE GIFT TOO FEW

(Dear Followers,
Although I will continue posting my Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights chapters, I plan to add some new devotional thoughts from my in-process second devotional book from time to time. Thank you for being my first readers.)

“…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

Ready or not, a new year is upon us. Most of us are in some stage of defrocking our lives of the all-out festivity we crazily plunged headlong into a few weeks back. We are ready to pack away the frills and get back down to business. We gather into trash bags the ripped-off wrappings of gifts, and we smile as we remember delighted faces beholding the surprise that had minutes ago been a titillating mystery.

We won’t tell anyone, of course, because after all, they all tried so hard… but for some of us, again this Christmas, we didn’t get what we really wanted. So once again we begin a new year feeling unsatisfied.

And really it’s nobody’s fault. What we want is nothing that can fit inside a box of any size. And nobody else could get it for us even if did. Of course there are varying degrees of disappointment about this commodity in everyone reading this, but I daresay we all harbor at least a little bit of unfulfillment concerning that which we all wish we could enter into a new year, at least once in our lives, totally unlacking.

Paz, Pax, Shalom…Peace. Though the word is a staple in all vocabularies, and in fact, is one of the few words that most of us know in at least one other language than our native one, the pictures and ideas that “peace” conjures up in the mind are vastly varied and sometimes even contradictory from one person to the next. Although we might not agree upon what it means, we all know it is the one thing we most desire for ourselves and the ones we most love. We all agree that if we could just have this one thing—peace—we would never want for anything else. It is also the one gift we most wish we could give to others. What does it take to find it? How much will it cost us to buy it? Will this new year bring us and those we love any closer to it than the last?

To some, peace means living in a nation that is not currently at war. However, such a simple definition of peace cannot reach within the soul; living in a nation that is not at war has little effect upon an embattled heart and a haunted mind. Likewise, it is possible to live amidst the violent clamor of minefields, hand grenades, and bombs and yet still possess a soul that is graced with serenity. Philippians 4:7 calls this “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.”

The peace of God—the kind our minds can’t even fathom because it is so durable. That’s a peace worth pursuing this year, no matter how great the cost.