What I Know About Peace

What do I know about peace?

We are in the last day of Peace Week of Advent.  When I began to think about writing about peace, I blurted out loud: What do I know about peace? And then I hooted out loud. As you age, you talk a lot to yourself. You even laugh to yourself.

Laughter it turns out is a key to peace. This week as I drove to work  Silent Night came on the radio. The line “Round yon virgin, mother and child” made me laugh out loud. I remembered that my mother and her sisters used to sing: “round John Bert, mother and child.” John Bert was a family friend. It took years before they realized what the song actually said. Few things are funnier than misunderstood song lyrics. I noticed my body’s reaction to the laughter. I felt peace. That is actually what the song is about after all. 

Laughter mixes up a cocktail of neurochemicals for body and mind. Dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin all increase while cortisol decreases for hours. In short, laughter resets the nervous system. (My source for this is Chat GPT and some 30 years of nursing not to mention 35 years of mothering.)

Laughter ushers in peace. And peace is a commodity at Christmas. No?

Here I will mention our current situation. The range (stove and oven combo) we’ve used for 19 years finally croaked. We purchased a new one many days ago (11/29/25). The entire process has been a series of unfortunate events. It still sits in my kitchen pretty but not functional. A mama really needs her stove and oven during Christmas. You might even say that the range debacle has robbed me of my peace. It has turned into a marriage issue revealing tiny tears in our ways of relating. Finally, we have begun to laugh. With that kindness and peace have shown up as we live together and continue the fight, not each other but to get this range up and working in time for Christmas dinner. 

Here we are: no range. Here we are laughing. Here we are finding peace in the chaos. 

What lyrics did you sing incorrectly that still bring you laughter today?

Hope

 

What do I put my hope in? How easy is it for me to look to something else for hope? What do I hope for this Advent season?

My answer is that I put my hope in God. It is pretty easy for me to look for hope elsewhere on the daily. This Advent season, I hope that I won’t be as easily distracted by the shiny, the worldly, the temporary. 

Hope in God is solid, certain, weighty. It is not from my imagination but from God Himself providing me with the grace to hope. I hope in the lovingkindness of God. 

This morning I hold the hope of God in Jesus. It is not fragile or whimsical. I return to moments of Thanksgiving that I hold dearly. My adult children left yesterday and we put up Christmas decorations. Ornaments with their young faces grin back at me from the tree. Like Mary, I ponder these things in my heart and treasure them. 

I pray that as I sort the temporary and fleeting, God would send His breath and let them float away like so much smoke. The solid will remain. Hope even though not seen is certain. 

Note: The Bible Project has an Advent series. Check it out. These questions came from them.

Wait

The first Sunday of Advent always comes as a surprise to me. Hard to believe since the Sunday ushering in the season is earmarked from now to infinity. I usually am so dialed in to Thanksgiving that on that Sunday, I say to myself: Is today the first Sunday of Advent? Do I have Advent candles? Yes and no. 

This morning I am waiting. It is not a particularly holy place. I can’t think of a sentence that would include holy and Lane Kiffin. But I wait on him, unpopular as he is in my home of Volunteer fans. I am in my own battle between self-hatred and hope. Why do I care what this man does? I will waste no more words on him.

My point is that it doesn’t take long to see how far I have wandered from the Garden of Eden or even from a posture of waiting according to the Word of God. 

In Hebrew the word for hope is qava. The Theological Word Book of the Old Testament expounds on this word:

This root means to wait or to look for with eager expectation. Waiting with steadfast endurance is a great expression of faith. It means enduring patiently in confident hope that God will decisively act for the salvation of his people. Waiting involves the very essence of a person’s being, his soul (nephews; Psalm 130:5). There will come a time when all that God has promised will be realized and fulfilled (Isaiah 49:23; Psalm 37:9). In the meantime the believer survives by means of his integrity and uprightness as he trusts in God’s grace and power (Psalm 25:21). His faith is strengthened through his testings, and his character is further developed (Psalm 27:14).

Not many things show me how undignified I am more than Ole Miss football. Integrity? Uprightness? Not usually if Ole Miss is playing football. We have had a historic season. Every victory each Ole Miss fan feels they have fought for bravely. And now we wait and war. Do we even want him? LSU, really? 

I typically think of the meaning of advent as to wait, but it means arrival. Not only the arrival of Jesus as an infant but more typically throughout church history the second coming. The arrival of Jesus to complete the work of restoring all of creation. 

If Ole Miss football minimally has the purpose of convincing me that I need to be restored, so be it. I am convinced also that what I wait for is infinitely more satisfying than anything this earth has to offer.

I turn to my favorite psalm. 

“I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:13-14

through the waters

But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you.” 

Isaiah 43:1-2

An apt passage for this day. 

God reminds us that he is our Creator. The Hebrew word for creator is bara, and it means that He made something out of nothing. The same word is used in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens.” This kind of creating cannot be done by human hands. 

Next he reminds us that he formed us. This word is yatsar and is most often used in reference to a potter. The idea is being squeezed into shape connoting a narrow place or a distressing situation. To be sure when God is forming us, it feels narrow and constricting.

As I sit here this morning, a soft rain falls on the roof outside - the remnants of Harvey. This week has been hell for many as the torrential rains of Harvey have left a path of devastation and death. The faces of those displaced and barely alive have burned into my soul. The kindness of strangers and the teamwork in rescues have brought me to tears. Prayers for these folks are on my lips all day. I am not one to step in with a Bible verse like “take 2 and call me in the morning.” When this degree of devastation occurs, we have to sit in the ashes before reaching for the cure. It feels like now we don't have the luxury of sitting. That will come later. Now is the time for us to bring diapers and clean underwear. To send money to those on the ground in Houston. To pray all day and all night. To house refugees if possible. To hold people while they cry and turn faces to God who is our Healer. 

Even now as we are about practical things, we can share our own stories of suffering. I have known periods of darkness when the hand of God seemed to be against me. My circumstances shouted that God had forsaken me. His plan seemed to be about destruction of me and my family and not for our good. My path to find the true face of God included those who shared their suffering, heartache and pain. In naming the truth about my circumstances and feelings, I found an empathetic God who did not spare His Son but gave Him freely for our healing.

Many in Nashville are all too close to the scenarios playing out on tv and social media. Our neighborhood flooded in 2010. I’ve heard from more than one friend about heart palpitations and anxiety as they ache for Houston. We in Nashville are quick to understand that the magnitude of this flood is much greater. But the comfort born from empathy is a true balm for the hurting. 

The Isaiah passage speaks of waters and rivers, fire and flames, captivity and displacement. It tells us of a God who is there in it with us. So often in suffering we feel alone. “Faith is putting ourselves quietly into God’s hands for Him to do His work.” Andrew Murray said those words some 175 years ago. 

I think it’s ok to ask “Why God?” or “Where is God?” because it reveals a searching heart. Literally in the next breath, the seeker could be confronted with the very real presence of God. Sometimes it looks like “Where is God?” and then a moment of seeing His presence in the kindness of a stranger or in a photo showing racial unity or in a sunset. 

In suffering we are reminded to live moment by moment. This moment is all we really have. We can tell the truth about where we are… searching or resting or raging. 

Andrew Murray also said, “Surrender yourself this very moment to abide wholly, only, always in Jesus. It is the work of a moment. Remember, Christ’s renewed acceptance of you is also the work of the moment. Be assured that He has you and holds you as his own, and that each new ‘Jesus, I do abide in you,’ meets with an immediate and hearty response from the Unseen One. No act of faith can be in vain. He immediately takes hold of us anew and draws us close to himself. Therefore, as often as the message comes, or the thought of it comes, Jesus says: ‘Abide in Me, do it at once.’ Each moment there is the whisper: ‘Do it now.’”

In any moment, He is ready to accept and receive and comfort. Do it now. 

new beginnings, new grace

“…there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf!” Genesis 8:11

I am attempting to read the Bible through this year using Meet the Bible by Philip Yancey and Brenda Quinn. Today I read a familiar story of the flood and when I got to this verse something washed over me: gratitude and gladness. After devastation, the dove returns with an olive leaf. I have seen this in my own life. 

Noah had labored and built an ark. And if I understand it correctly, he waited with his family and the animals inside for 7 days before it rained. It had never rained. Then the deluge and horror of losing humanity and all the other animals and the places he must have loved. Then the waiting, sending out the raven then the dove. I cannot imagine standing out on the deck of the ark watching the horizon for the dove. What could he have felt seeing something green in its beak?

Have you ever experienced devastation? Has God ever took a wrecking ball to your life? Have you ever been harmed or watched someone you love be harmed? Have you ever looked out over ruins and wondered if God cared or if He was real? 

God painted something in the sky for Noah, a rainbow. And He wrote a poem:

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.

The rainbow is the first recorded covenant by God. God chose beauty to remind us of grace.

The representation of the shower of His grace looks like a rainbow. And when I see it, I have to fall to my knees and receive. I open my hands and let the abundance weight them down.

Today I am thankful for new life, new beginnings, new stories, new adventures. And grace. Yes, I am thankful for grace.