Troubles can blast our hearts, minds, and families. The “fireworks” of life – family struggles, relationship problems, work challenges, financial strain, even dividing church can feel like explosions, rattling our emotional atmosphere.
Yet we know Christ who can lift us over this disturbance. Jesus Himself “is our peace,” When we obey in His presence, His peace is greater than any disruption, putting down the noise of any worry, grumbling, hurt, and discordance.
This would have been powerful assurance to Jews and gentiles alike. They’d once lived “without hope and without God in the world” “Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” (Ephesians 2:12)
But in Christ, they’d been brought near to Him, and consequently to each other, by His blood. Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:14, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”
As we start a new year, with threats of unrest and pandemics ever rumbling in this world, let’s turn from life’s noisy trials to seek our ever-present Peace. He quiets the chaos and heals us.______________________________________________________________________________