I hope you have a great day today — maybe your best ever! You probably wish the same for me and for all the people you love and care about.
We all want our lives to go well — even great — every day. But it’s sobering to realize we can’t control what will happen to us. On any given day, we might experience great joy or great pain or a thousand and one combinations of the two.
Here’s Christ’s promise to us in the midst of everything: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27).
When we believe these words and seek to manifest them daily, we find the spiritual equilibrium that would otherwise elude us.
Our tendency is to judge whether our lives are going well or poorly according to whether we are experiencing blessing or misfortune. Christ’s offer of his peace gives us a completely different standard of judgment. It shifts our focus away from trying to control our circumstances (which is impossible) to staying grounded in his peace no matter what happens.
This is the only sane way to live. The more we grow into this spiritual form of sanity, the more God’s peaceful future becomes present in our daily lives. Every time we worship together, we make ourselves available to this glorious future, and we are often amazed by how many new insights and how much more power we find for living.
With love and anticipation,
Evan Howard,
Minister