Peace in Christian preaching emphasizes the deep, abiding tranquility that comes from Christ's presence, surpassing mere absence of conflict (John 14:27). It often contrasts fragile human peace with divine peace that sustains believers amid trials, using images of harmony, reconciliation, and the calming of storms to illustrate this spiritual reality.
Christmas sermon 1990. God's peace vs. world's peace.
1. Most people long for peace.
2. Peace is the essence of Christmas.
a. Prophesied in OT.
b. Fulfilled by Jesus in NT.
3. Peace is possible in this life.
a. Inner spiritual peace.
b. Peace in relationships.
c. Peace in world.
4. Be peacemakers.
a. Make your peace with God.
b. Make peace with others.
Contrasts world's longing for peace with Jesus' promise of both peace and conflict. Graham argues that conflict will continue due to sin in human heart. There is no contradiction in Jesus' message; John Wesley interpreted Christ to mean, "I come to spread the fire of heavenly love over all the earth." His love is a refining fire. But love is not neutral. [1386]
*
"The war in the gulf is not a Christian war, a Jewish war or a Muslim war. It is a just war." (George Bush to National Religious Broadcasters Convention in February 1991)
Article looks at just-war theory, which seeks to limit the purpose and conduct of war.
1. A just war must be declared by a legitimate authority.
2. The cause must be just.
3. It must be fought with the right intentions.
4. It must be fought in a proper manner.
5. It must be started only as a last resort.
The theory is complicated and hard to enforce, such as what is a last resort? There can always be another delaying conference. Application is made to 1990- 1991 Kuwait-Iraq-U.S. war.
_________________
Another version of Just War criteria [from Baptist Press, 3/5/03]:
-- Just cause, as a defensive war;
-- Just intent, for liberation, not destruction or subjugation;
-- Last resort, when other means have been exhausted;
-- Legitimate authority (in America, with the approval of Congress);
-- Limited and achievable goals;
-- Noncombatant immunity, with every effort made to protect civilians;
-- Proportionality, in which the benefit outweighs the cost.
_________________
Letter to Newsweek editor on 3/11/91:
You suggest that just-war doctrine was born when Augustine "sought to reconcile the Christian commandment to 'love your neighbor as yourself' with the soldier's duty to kill." Yet "Love your neighbor as yourself" is neither original to Christianity nor altogether distinctive to it. Jesus was merely quoting from the Old Testament book of Leviticus (19:18). What is uniquely Christian is Jesus' commandment to "love your enemies ... Do good to them that hate you. Resist not evil. If any man will take away your coat, let him have your cloak too." If Augustine can reconcile war with that, he's not merely a theologian - he's a magician.
Harry Ruja, La Mesa, Calif.
"Spiritual warfare" is an important Biblical teaching but a neglected one. It has three aspects:
1. The reality of spiritual warfare.
2. The reality of our spiritual enemies beyond "flesh and blood."
3. The reality of spiritual evil, or sin.
The power of "positive thinking" should not blind us to the power of negative thinking. There is a need for negative thinking if there are real enemies. More important, there is a need for negative acting, not "going with the flow." There is a place for hate in the Christian life. If we become incapable of hate, we become also incapable of love.
Christians have three enemies:
1. The world.
2. The flesh.
3. The Devil.
Malcolm Muggeridge says that sin is the only Christian dogma that can be proved just by reading the daily newspapers. Why does the modern mind misunderstand sin? Because sin is a word that presupposes two things the modern world disbelieves in: a divine will giving moral laws, and a human soul receiving them.
Evil is a broader term than sin. Misunderstandings about evil:
1. The Dracula misunderstanding - evil is a great myth, a fascinating
fiction.
2. The Hitler misunderstanding - the only evil is cruelty. "This notion is
so pervasive that many readers think there aren't Ten Commandments, but
only one. If they haven't killed anybody lately, they think they're
saints."
3. The Jungian (and Hindu and Buddhist) misunderstanding - evil is only "the
dark side" of good, that good and evil are not really, ultimately
distinct but one.
4. The Platonic and liberal misunderstanding - man is by nature good and
wise, and evil is only ignorance and therefore can be cured by
education.
5. The Zoroastrian misunderstanding - that evil is a "thing," even an
absolute, a second God. (Zoroaster was the sixth-century Persian
prophet who taught this ultimate dualism.)
Spiritual warfare needs ethics. The ancients feared evil too much (witch hunts) while moderns fear it too little.
It is a popular notion that the warmest part of this island must be in the center, away from the cold waters and high gales of the inconstant sea. But the scientific fact is just the reverse. The sea has a benign and steadying influence upon the climate of the coast. The coldest place in England, according to the charts, is a spot at its very heart.
There is a certain grace that comes to our shore and knocks, yea beats, and even lashes, there; and it has more of the changeless love of God in it than all the affections that sweeten the inlands of life. Sea and shore may indeed meet in storm. But our peace lies through storm.
#2054
*
One of the best-loved Bible verses for Christmas must be Luke 2:14, where the angels proclaim:
"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace, goodwill toward men."
The world longs for peace and harmony, and it's especially at Christmas that we expect a loving attitude among people. But too often the exact opposite happens. One of my members recently commented that nothing has brought her family closer to divorce than putting up the Christmas tree.
I hope your family has had a more positive experience with the decorations, but it's interesting that "goodwill toward men" does not refer to human harmony. Literally the angels are saying, "peace on earth to people on whom God's favor rests." The secret of Christmas is not our goodwill toward each other, which always falls short. The secret is God's goodwill toward us, which is what salvation is all about.
Exegetical material and sermon outline for Zechariah 8:1-19. The prophet exhorts the people to speak the truth to one another. Peace and truth are woven together.
One page emphasizes statistics on violence in America.
1. Love peace. (8:19)
a. Peace/shalom is complete well-being.
b. The prophet speaks of "sowing of peace."
c. Peace is the end, but is also the means. "There is no way to peace,
peace is the way." A.J. Muste
2. Love truth.
a. Without truth, peace degenerates into greeting card sentimentality.
b. Truth is honesty.
c. Truth as justice.
3. Loving truth and peace brings celebration.
a. Israel was laying a more peaceable foundation for their society.
b. The work of loving truth and peace brings celebration.
c. But the work must continue.
#2626
*
Victim-thinking permeates our society, including the church. The trouble with bitterness is that it does not stay the same; like a cancer, it grows. It distorts reality. It keeps us chained to the past. In a world of inequity, we're going to have our share of bitter experiences.
Ten steps to becoming better rather than bitter.
1. Acknowledge the problem.
2. Stop feeding bitterness.
3. Stop making excuses for what happened.
4. Live in forgiveness.
5. Give yourself time to process your feelings.
6. Initiate reconciliation.
7. Rid yourself of every root of bitterness as soon as possible.
8. Renew your mind.
9. Make things happen.
10. Proclaim God is sovereign.
Psalm 10 is called the "victim's psalm" by the author. A fill-in-the-blank self-study follows.
In his sermon "Finding God in a Busy World," John Killinger concludes his message on prayer and solitude with this story:
"I was in Brooklyn Heights some months ago to visit the church where one of the greatest Congregationalist ministers had once preached, the great Henry Ward Beecher. In the evening, I walked with one of my hosts along the promenade that overlooks Manhattan. ... She talked about her life when she had arrived there several years before. Her husband had left her, and she was having difficulties with her only child, a daughter. She had come to this place at night thinking she could not go on. She hadn't wanted to take her life, but she didn't know how she could go on in the pain and the agony she was feeling.
"She said she sat on one of the benches and looked across the bay at the city. She stared out at Liberty Island in the distance, and she watched the tugboats as they moved in and out of the bay. She sat, and she sat. The longer she sat, she said, the more her life seemed to be invested with a kind of quietness that came over her like a spirit.
"Down deep she began to feel peaceful again. She said she felt somehow that God was very near to her, as if she could almost reach out and touch God. Better yet, she didn't need to reach out. God was touching her. She felt whole and complete and healed as she sat there that evening. It became a turning point in her life.
"'Since then,' she said, 'whenever I feel under pressure at my job or from any personal problems, I come down here and sit on this very bench. I'm quiet; I feel it all over again, and everything is all right.'
"'Be still and know that I am God.'
"When we know that, everything is all right."
*
[see #3957 for original article on preaching with illustrations]
What Christians could learn from Menno Simons and how he rescued the Anabaptist movement.
The story reads a lot like Waco and the Branch Davidians in 1993, only it was the spring of 1534 in the city of Muenster (located in what is today the west-central region of modern Germany). Hundreds of Dutch-speaking Anabaptists -- mainly artisans, peasants, and shopkeepers -- converged on the city. They were united by their common opposition to infant baptism and the sacraments. But they were also driven by a primal fear forged on the anvil of torture and by an eschatalogical conviction that Muenster was to become the New Jerusalem, the site chosen by God for the re-establishment of his kingdom on earth.
In the months that followed, the so-called Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster quickly degenerated into a morass of religious fanaticism and excess. Jan van Leyden -- the David Koresh of the sixteenth century -- appointed himself the king. He instituted a reign of terror that included polygamy (he took for himself no fewer than 12 wives), the elimination of private property, forced baptisms of the city's non-Anabaptist inhabitants, and armed preparations for a glorious final battle in which the elect gathered in Muenster would vanquish the godless.
But in the summer of 1535, the New Jerusalem of Muenster met with a violent demise. Armies of the Catholic Bishop von Waldeck first besieged, then stormed the city, and the sordid affair came to a bloody and violent conclusion.
For most North Americans, Waco-type images are not their first impression of today's Mennonites, the spiritual heirs to the early Anabaptists. Instead, when most of us think of Mennonites, images of their Amish cousins come to mind: a hardworking, honest, and rural people, committed to a quiet sober life of humility, simplicity, service and, above all, to Christian pacifism; they shun politics -- and sometimes each other as a matter of church discipline -- and emerge in the public eye only for massive quilt auctions to support overseas relief work or to clean up after natural disasters.
The contrast between this idealized image of contemporary Mennonites and the Muensterites of the sixteenth century could hardly be more striking. Who intervened to accomplish this amazing turnaround?
The answer is Menno Simons. Out of the ashes of Muenster, a new Anabaptist group emerged, led by Menno Simons (1496-1565), a Catholic priest turned radical reformer. Menno restored stability to a group in which some had broken loose from their theological moorings. His leadership sought to balance the eschatological impulses of a persecuted sect with the model of a disciplined, visible church ruled by the authority of Scripture. To a movement of uneducated artisans, deeply suspicious of trained "school theologians" (Schriftgelehrten), Menno brought a measure of theological sophistication that blended central themes of orthodox Christianity with the distinctive nuances of the radical reformation. Later known as the Mennonites, the group that gathered around his leadership espoused a biblicism shorn of private visions and advocated a sober discipline of its members, which eventually earned them the sobriquet of "the quiet in the land." They explicitly renounced violence and political power. To be sure, well before Menno emerged as a leader, there were other Anabaptist groups who were committed to biblical pacifism.
On the occasion of his five-hundredth birthday, the career and thought of Menno Simons merits renewed consideration. Deeply biblical, thoroughly Christocentric, steeped in the evangelical language of the New Birth and the Great Commission, Menno offers modern evangelicals an inspiring example of leadership that balances zeal and discipline, piety and theological depth, courage and wisdom.
REFORMER ON THE RUN
Menno was born sometime in 1496 in the small Friesen town of Witmarsum in the north of the Netherlands. The son of a farmer, he attended grammar school at a monastery, where he likely learned Latin and gained some acquaintance with the church fathers. At the age of 15, Menno entered a novitiate and five years later became a deacon in the Catholic church.
At the time of his ordination to the priesthood, the Reformation in the Netherlands had found expression primarily in the form of local resistance to the sacraments. Indeed, soon after he began his first assignment as a vicar in his father's native village of Pingjum, Menno himself experienced doubts about the "real presence" of Christ in the sacrament of Communion. Initially, he had ignored these doubts and, by his own account, gave himself over to "playing cards, drinking, and frivolities of all sorts." But in 1531, the martyrdom of Sicke Freeriks Snijder -- "a godfearing, pious hero" in nearby Leeuwarden, beheaded by state authorities for the crime of rebaptism -- prompted Menno to embark on a fresh and systematic reading of the Bible.
"I examined the scriptures diligently," he wrote in his autobiographical Departure from the Papacy, "and pondered them earnestly, but could find no report of infant baptism." Still, he vacillated. Though intrigued by the staunch biblicism of the Anabaptist movement, he nonetheless accepted a promotion as a priest in his home church at Witmarsum in 1531 and continued to carry out the duties of his office for the next three years, all the while struggling with the tension between his understanding of Scripture and received Catholic tradition.
In the end, it was not a new intellectual insight that led Menno to break with the old church, but rather the fanatical excesses of the Anabaptist movement itself. In the spring of 1535, as the horrors of the Muensterite kingdom unfolded, Menno penned his first surviving tract, a polemic against Jan of Leyden, in which he denounced the private visions and impatient violence of the Muensterites and laid the groundwork for a biblical hermeneutic based firmly on the teachings of Christ.
For the next nine months, Menno attempted to preach his new message of evangelical reform from the pulpit of his parish church in Witmarsum. But finally, on January 20, 1536 -- precisely when public sentiment against the Anabaptists had reached a crescendo -- Menno resigned his priestly office, gave up the salary, status, and security of his former identity, and publicly aligned himself with the Anabaptist cause. "Without constraint," he wrote, "I renounced all my worldly reputation, name and fame, my unchristian abominations, my masses, my infant baptism, and my easy life, and I willingly submitted to distress and poverty under the heavy cross of Christ."
Shortly thereafter Obbe Philips, leader of the beleaguered pacifist remnant of Dutch Anabaptism, ordained Menno as an Anabaptist pastor. Immediately Menno set about to rebuild the scattered and dispirited brotherhood. For the next three years, he traveled almost constantly -- preaching, baptizing, instructing new believers in the faith, denouncing the apocalyptic remnants of the Muensterite kingdom -- while simultaneously writing a flurry of apologetic treatises, including The Spiritual Resurrection (1536), Meditation on the Twenty -- Fifth Psalm (1537), The New Birth (1537), Christian Baptism (1539), and his most influential work, Foundation of the Christian Doctrine (1539-40).
By 1542, Dutch authorities in Leeuwarden publicized a reward of 500 guilders for Menno's capture. Remarkably, he eluded arrest for the next two decades. Traveling with his wife, Gertrude, and their three children, Menno lamented in 1544 that he "could not find in all the countries a cabin or hut in which [we] could be put up in safety for a year or even a half a year." Although he successfully eluded arrest, numerous tales circulated of his narrow escapes from the authorities. One oft-repeated, though likely apocryphal, story recounts how Menno was once traveling by stagecoach when a group of armed horsemen, carrying a warrant for Menno's arrest, overtook the carriage. As it happened, Menno was seated outside next to the driver. When the soldiers asked him whether Menno Simons was in the carriage, Menno leaned into the coach and said, "They want to know if a Menno Simons is in there." When the occupants said no, Menno answered his pursuers: "They say he is not in there." The horsemen continued on their way. [see separately at #4003]
Menno preached a gospel of the New Birth, giving prominent attention to distinctive Anabaptist convictions regarding adult baptism, the priesthood of all believers, pacifism, and a rejection of the oath and magisterial offices. During the last period of his life, Menno's writings took on an increasingly polemical character as he defended the Anabaptists from attacks from without (against Reformed theologians such as John a Lasco, Martin Micron, and Adam Pastor) and heresy from within (against fellow Anabaptist David Joris, for example, on the question of prophetic visions). Menno died on January 31, 1561, at the age of 65 in Fresenberg, a haven of refuge in north Germany and site of the press that printed many of his later works.
The followers he left behind -- known as Mennists or Mennonites as early as 1542 -- were not altogether unified. But his legacy as a prolific writer, a theologian, and a polemicist lived on in the broader Anabaptist tradition. A recent bibliography of his published writings runs to 200 entries in Dutch, German, English, and Spanish. On the occasion of his five-hundredth birthday, nearly a million Mennonites, scattered in six continents and over 60 countries around the world, are paying him special honor.
CALLED TO PEACE
Perhaps most radical of all, Menno's writings challenge contemporary evangelicals to rethink the question of Jesus' teachings on peace, and particularly the easy alliance modern Christians have made with the political order.
In our own time, the graphic accounts of bloody massacres and human atrocities committed against each other by the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda have all but disappeared from the headlines these days. Yet, for evangelical Christians, there is an element to the Rwanda story that should haunt our conscience for a long time: 90 percent of Rwanda's people are professed Christians.
To the African church, Rwanda had been a success story. Yet, according to an InterVarsity leader in the region, missionaries preached a gospel about having a right relationship with God but not necessarily right relationships with one other. "This is why we can be 90 percent Christian yet kill in the name of ethnicity," he says.
Preaching a gospel that separates relationship with God from human relations was anathema to Menno Simons. Worse, the haunting specter of Christians killing Christians was completely unthinkable. In his refutation of the violence at Muenster, Menno recognized the profound danger of mixing zealous Christian convictions with the coercive power of the sword.
At the heart of the New Birth, he insisted, was a recognition that God granted us his gift of forgiveness and love while we were still sinners alienated from him -- indeed, while we were yet enemies of God. God's gift of salvation through Christ has world -- transforming power precisely because it offers followers of Jesus a concrete model for love expressed in daily life. Because we have been saved and transformed by grace, we too will embody that same grace -- filled love with all relationships, including -- indeed, especially -- those who might be considered our enemies.
"The Prince of Peace," wrote Menno, "is Jesus Christ. We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be ... a church ... of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace" (Reply to False Accusations).
Living in accordance with this forgiving, gracious peace of God may well entail suffering. In the sixteenth century the cost was social and economic marginalization, torture, and sometimes even death. But such suffering also offers a profound opportunity for witness to the love of God in the midst of a violent, hate-filled culture.
The prospect of suffering rather than retaliating with violence is certainly alien to modern notions of self-esteem; it is also alien to contemporary expressions of North American Christianity, whether on the Right or the Left, that seek to impose their visions of a godly society upon others. Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to the story of the ill-fated Anabaptist kingdom of Muenster.
Christians have always been tempted to take control of history; to seize the levers of temporal power and make history come out "right," to try to align the kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God. To be sure, the temptations of violence today are rarely as blatant or extreme as that of Jan van Leyden -- or even that of Rwanda. But a Christianity that aligns itself with a culture of violence -- from the Left or the Right -- seems to make a mockery of the grace it proclaims as its gift to the nonbelieving world.
Menno would argue that violence of any sort in the name of Christ is blasphemy, which calls for repentance. His writings call upon Christians to resist the seduction of a violent culture (even when that violence is sanctioned by the state). As a whole, evangelicals will probably not be convinced of Menno's arguments for Christian pacifism; but at the very least we should have an uneasy conscience about our too-easy rationalizations.
Regardless of one's understanding of Christian pacifism, in a profound way we are all heirs of Menno. The principles of religious voluntarism and a disestablished church -- principles for which the sixteenth-century Anabaptists paid with their lives -- are now assumed. Even though not a systematic theologian, Menno Simons's vision of reborn Christians living in a disciplined and visible church, and embodying in their daily lives the loving peace of God's grace, still has the power to inspire Christians today. On the five-hundredth anniversary of his birth, evangelicals of all stripes -- including Mennonites -- would do well to blow the dust off Menno's writings and read them afresh.
TIME LINE OF MENNO SIMONS' LIFE
1483 Birth of Martin Luther
1484 Birth of Ulrich Zwingli
1496 Birth of Menno Simons
1509 Birth of John Calvin
1513 Birth of John Knox
1517 Luther's 95 Theses
1521 Diet of Worms (Luther's "Here I stand" speech)
1523-25 Zwingli's reforms in Zurich
1524 *Ordained as priest, assigned to Pingjum parish
1524-25 Peasants' War
1525 Swiss Brethren (Anabaptists) break with Zwingli
1527 Schleitheim Confession (Anabaptist)
1530 Augsburg Confession (Lutheran)
1531 *Called to Witmarsum, his home parish
1531 Zwingli's death in battle
1534-35 "New Jerusalem" established in Muenster
1535 *Menno speaks out against Muensterites
1536 Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (first ed.)
1536 *Left priesthood, joined Anabaptist movement
1536/7? *Marriage to Gertrude
1537? *Ordained as Anabaptist leader
1539 *Christian Baptism
1539-40 *The Foundation of Christian Doctrine
1541 *The True Christian Faith
1542 *Emperor issues edict against Menno
1543 *Left Holland for Germany
1546 Luther's death
1549/1552 Book of Common Prayer (Church of England)
1555 Peace of Augsburg
1561 *Menno's Death
1563 Thirty-Nine Articles (Church of England)
1564 Calvin's death
1566 Second Helvetic Confession (Reformed)
1572 Knox's death
(Menno Simon's life has date followed by a " * ")
John D. Roth is professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College and editor of
the Mennonite Quarterly Review.
Copyright(c) 1996 by Christianity Today, Inc/Christianity Today Magazine.
Oct. 7, 1996, Vol. 40, No. 2, Page 44
ctoc0796sc6TB0446A9i
#4001
[see #4002 for Menno's views on the church and salvation]
*
You can rest even when you have a hundred things to do.
You punch the accelerator. The speedometer needle edges up. The world outside your window is a blur. Faster, faster you zip around the track, exhilarated by the speed and the whine of an engine pushed to the limit. Skillfully, you weave past other cars -- watchful, alert. And suddenly tense.
SOMETHING IS WRONG.
A red flag catches your eye. Your crew chief is signaling you to pull in for a pit stop. What will you do? Will you heed the warning, even though it means giving up your position? Or will you ignore the signal and press on?
As a driver on the race track of busyness, I've experienced the thrill of zipping smoothly through my days, exhilarated by the speed and the hum of a schedule pushed to the limit. I've also suffered the pain of a crash because I've refused to obey the signals of the Holy Spirit warning me to temporarily pull out of the race for needed maintenance and refueling.
Why do I keep going when the Holy Spirit urges, "Pull over"? Do I subconsciously resent someone else controlling my life? Am I prideful, thinking I know best? Is my need to perform stronger than my desire to obey? Do I fear disapproval from others?
I crash for many reasons, but the result is always the same. Peace vanishes. I become anxious, nervous. People and their needs annoy me. Hurtful words slip out. I can't sleep. God seems distant. The warning light of my life flashes "Out of Control."
Perhaps the "frenzies" wouldn't bother me so much if I had never experienced peace in the midst of the whirlwind. But I have! Because of this, I feel an urgency to recapture my lost peace, and then to remain at peace -- always! But is this possible?
The world thinks it knows how to find peace in the whirlwind. Yoga instructors insist the answer is meditation and "out of body experiences." Magazines offer "Ten Ways to Beat Busyness." Corporate trainers promote "proven techniques for stress-free living." Travel agents claim peace is available in Hawaii -- for only $3,000!
But God said peace is not found in a program or a place, but in a Person. Jesus. "My peace I give you," Jesus said. "I do not give to you as the world gives" (John 14:27).
The peace the world offers is short-lived and shallow; the peace of Christ is immeasurable and eternal. His peace transcends human understanding and earthly circumstances (Phil. 4:7,12).
In Christ, I can be at peace when I have five major projects due at the same time. I can enjoy serenity in the midst of screaming children, a ringing phone, and an unexpected visit from my in-laws. I can remain calm when my car breaks down on the way to a job interview.
The secret to peace in the whirlwind of busyness is to abide in Christ.
GLUED TO JESUS
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee," we're told in Is. 26:3 (KJV). "Remain in me, and I will remain in you," says John 15:4.
According to these verses, to have peace I need only to stay glued to Christ! Easy, right? No. In the stress of daily living I often become unglued.
My seven-year-old daughter, Amanda, came home from vacation Bible school and proudly announced, "I asked Jesus into my heart." "But honey, you asked Jesus into your heart two years ago," I replied. She shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "I know. But He keeps escaping."
Like Amanda, I sometimes feel as though I can't keep Jesus in me. He unexpectedly slips away, taking His peace with Him. Actually, the reverse is true. I slip away from Jesus and leave His peace behind! I try to "fix [my] eyes on Jesus" (Heb. 12:2) to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). But my mind and heart wander. People and situations clamor for attention. Interruptions steal my time. Unexpected problems pre-empt my plans. Suddenly, I'm no longer "in Christ," but in chaos!
MEANINGFUL MOMENTS WITH GOD
Because God lives outside of time and space, He can pack the intensity of a week-long prayer retreat into a single moment. Following are examples of my meaningful moments with God. I trust you will not see this list as a formula for achieving intimacy with God. Intimacy with God has to do with who He is, not what I do! Intimacy flows from who you are as an individual. You are unique, so your own "list" will look quite different from mine. My primary challenge is this: look expectantly to see God in everything, and your meaningful moments will multiply. God Greetings Each morning as I open my eyes, my first thought is, "Good morning, Father." At the end of the day as I lay my head on the pillow, I whisper sleepily, "Good night, Lord." These simple greetings acknowledge God as the Alpha and Omega of my day. Traveling Tabernacle Often, surrounded by active children and talkative adults, I relish the time in my car when it is just Jesus and me. I pop a tape into the cassette player and sing praises to my Father. In the joy of expressive worship, the cares of the world slip away. I'm not even bothered by the driver next to me who is looking at me like I'm a few bricks short of a full load.
POTS AND PANS PRAYERS
Brother Lawrence, who worked in a monastery kitchen, said that whether he was in the kitchen or on his knees in the sanctuary made no difference. God was there just the same. This thought has inspired what I call "pots and pans prayers," a time in which dishwashing becomes communion with God. One evening as I was scraping greasy slime off a pot, my husband volunteered his help. "Go away. Can't you see I'm having a meaningful moment?" I teased. (However, I did offer to let him have his own meaningful moment the following evening!) Bible Break A slooowww moving train was making me late for an appointment. I drummed my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Then Psalm 131 (NASB) came to mind: "I do not involve myself in great matters ... too difficult for me." Why was this train moving at turtle speed? "Surely I have composed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me." Reflecting upon that verse was like receiving a half-hour massage. I arrived at my appointment late ... but relaxed.
SHARED SECRETS
Like a lover's wink across a crowded room is the sweetness of my shared secrets with God. He alone knew how much I wanted the $250 dress at the department store for an upcoming party. He knew the temptation I fought to buy the dress when it went on sale. He knew my disappointment upon discovering that even at 60 percent off, the dress was more than I could afford. Then, several days later, I came across a similar dress in my size at a garage sale -- for $15! As I paid for the dress, I blushed with joy! God's personal gifts endear me to Him in a way too intimate for words. Holy Hike God and I take walks together at least three times a week. Sometimes we share companionable silence. Other times we talk -- I share my heart and He shares His. Often I tell Him how much I love Him, how grateful I am for all He has done for me. In these moments I realize that all my life is a walk with Him, a joyful journey of new discoveries and growing closer to the One I love. -- Lorraine Pintus
Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest that we must begin with the end in mind. Focusing on the end simplifies the middle. When I fix my eyes on my end -- to glorify Jesus in all I say and do -- and I abide in Christ in the present, the days take care of themselves.
DELEGATION
Jesus did not attempt to handle His busyness on His own but, as God directed, He delegated; first to the 12 apostles, then to the 72, and later to His future church (Lk. 6:12-15, 10:1; Mt. 28:19-20).
Throughout Scripture, delegation is encouraged. "The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone," Jethro told Moses (Ex. 18:18), who then established overseers to help him lead Israel. Nehemiah would never have dreamed of rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem by himself.
Delegation is an effective tool for managing busyness. When coupled with empowerment and instruction, delegation minimizes burnout, builds up the Body of Christ, and advances the Kingdom of God.
REST
In our performance-oriented society, many of us, like the Energizer bunny, keep going ... and going! But God commands us to rest (Ex. 16:23, 31:15). In the Old Testament, rest came through observing special occasions: Weekly rest (the Sabbath), seasonal rest (feasts and holidays), and extended rest, as in the seventh Sabbath year in which the land and people rested. In the New Testament, rest comes through a relationship with Jesus.
Jesus proclaimed Himself "Lord of the Sabbath" (Lk. 6:5), suggesting that His rest supersedes the rest found in the Law. Old Testament rest involved occasional, physical rest. New Testament rest is continual and spiritual. Old Testament rest occurred because of something the people did out of respect for God. New Testament rest occurs because of what God did out of love for His people. Jesus' death on the cross put to death my sin, the root cause of all restlessness.
How do I tap into this rest? Simply abide. The core of my every thought must be: I am in Christ and He is in me. To rest, I have only to shut out the distractions of the world, draw deep within, and commune with my Lord in the quiet center of my heart where He resides. Though winds of conflict and waves of busyness assail me, I rest safely in the arms of the One who whispers, "Peace, be still."
Jesus wants me to combine the wisdom of the Old Testament physical rest with the concept of New Testament spiritual rest. He illustrated this as He instructed His weary disciples, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest" (Mk. 6:31). Such instruction reinforces what I know to be true (but often forget): apart from Christ, there is no rest.
PRAYER
Jesus prayed unceasingly. Certain prayers expressed praise; others acknowledged His ongoing fellowship with the Father. One prayer expressed agony.
In His plea for the Father to remove the cross, Jesus sweat drops of blood (Lk. 22:44). He did not want to do what God was asking Him to do! Ultimately Jesus surrendered His desires to the Father's will. The cross remained, but in His mercy, God sent an angel to strengthen Jesus for what lay ahead.
Recently I agonized over something God was asking me to do. I pleaded with Him to remove the situation from my schedule, but His response was no, that He would use this to accomplish His purposes in me and in others. In His mercy, God sent two "angels," Sandy and Linda, to encourage me. Through the prayers of these friends, my burden lifted. My schedule had not changed, but now I had the peace to deal with what lay ahead.
LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME
"Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself," Jesus said in Mt. 6:34.
Panic over my schedule almost always comes from looking too far ahead in my Day-Timer. Activities swell tsunami-size, and a giant wave of anxiety crashes down upon me.
Scripture warns us not to borrow trouble from tomorrow. God instructed the Israelites concerning the gathering of manna: "The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day" (Ex. 16:4). Some people disobeyed and gathered tomorrow's manna. The extra portion spoiled and became a breeding ground for maggots.
In Lk. 11:3, Jesus tells the disciples to pray, "Give us each day our daily bread." Charles Spurgeon comments on this thought in his daily devotional: "He only permits us to pray for daily bread and only promises that as our days our strengths shall be."
MANAGING BUSYNESS
If I lived in a secluded mountain cabin, being at peace would be easy. But I don't. Instead I must learn to be at peace on the racetrack of busyness. The Holy Spirit is my Helper, warning me when I stray from Christ. Anxiousness and worry are His signals that I am going too fast, that it's time to pull over and reconnect with my Lord.
What must I do to stay connected to Jesus? Depend upon Him. Obey Him. Focus continually upon Him. How do I effectively manage my busyness? The same way He did -- delegate to others, rest, pray, and live one day at a time.
Are you at peace in your busyness? If not, Jesus invites you: "Come to me ... and I will give you rest" (Mt. 11:28). Remain in me, and I will remain in you" (John 15:4). Peace in the midst of the whirlwind is that easy ... and that difficult.
Still, it is possible to consistently be at peace in the midst of busyness. I know because Christ did it. Christ was most likely the busiest person who ever lived. Crowds pestered Him. Strangers grabbed His clothing. People with needs disturbed His sleep and interrupted His teaching. In one day alone, Jesus encouraged the disciples, healed the sick, taught the multitude, fed 5,000,and helped a friend through a storm! All this, and He still found time to be alone with His Father (John 6:1-24). How did Jesus remain at peace in the midst of such busyness? He had help. Supernatural help. "By myself I can do nothing" (John 5:30). "It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work" (John 14:10). Jesus lived a life of unbroken fellowship with His Father. It was His constant connectedness to God that enabled Him to have peace in the midst of turmoil. If I abide in Christ, I, too, can experience peace in the midst of chaos. But I must stay connected to my Lord, as Jesus stayed connected to His Father. Jesus demonstrates how this is possible. Following are seven things Jesus did that allowed Him to remain connected to His Father. Dependence "I do nothing on my own" (John 8:28) seemed to be the theme of Jesus' life. When a hemorrhaging woman touched Jesus' garment, hoping to be healed, power drained from Him. If power drained from Jesus each time He healed, why didn't He become "empty"? Dependence upon the Father allowed Him to draw from a well of limitless resources. Jesus invites me to draw from this well so that I, too, need never feel empty or drained. But access to the well is only gained through wholehearted dependence upon Christ. I must allow Jesus to be my all: the breath in my lungs, the thoughts in my head, the words on my lips. My spirit must proclaim, "Apart from [Christ, I] can do nothing" (John 15:5). My actions must declare, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). How does this work? When I am weary but have a Bible study to teach, I picture the tired me resting in a chair while Christ in me teaches the study. When I want to look at a magazine but my children want me to read them a book, I order the selfish me to step aside while Christ in me reads Hop on Pop (for the millionth time). When I feel anger toward the driver who has just cut me off, the angry me moves over and Jesus in me offers a sympathetic you-must-have-had-a-bad-day wave. Much of my dependence upon Christ involves me getting out of the way so that the King of kings may speak and act through me.
Obedience
In John 15:9-10, Jesus challenges, "Remain in my love, ... just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love." Jesus said, "I love the Father and ... do exactly what my Father has commanded me" (John 14:31, emphasis mine). Sometimes this verse translates in my life as, "I love the Father and do pretty much what He commands me." I do not make it a point to disobey God, but neither do I make it a point to wholeheartedly follow the holy standard God prescribes. The Bible says, "Do not judge"; instead I "discern." Scripture commands me to forgive as I have been forgiven; I sometimes forgive as I think the offender deserves. God warns, "Do not lie"; so I exaggerate.
"The man who says, 'I know him,' but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1 John 2:4). I cannot abide if I will not obey. If the peace of God is absent from my life, perhaps it is because I am refusing to obey the Holy Spirit warning me to align my life with the Word of God. Focus Jesus said, "I know where I came from and where I am going" (John 8:14). Christ's every action was embedded in His purpose. He did not debate over whether or not to include certain activities in His schedule. Rather, the deliberateness of His every action spoke, "That is why I have come" (Mark 1:38; see also Luke 5:32, 9:21-22, 12:49-51, and John 12:27).
PEACE IN GOD.
[Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for] Thou hast formed us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee. [as translated and annotated by J. G. Pilkington, MA, Vicar of West Hackney]
[Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for] Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is resteless until it repose in Thee. [as translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey]
… St. Augustine (354-430), Confessions 1:1
#4296
*
Harry Emerson Fosdick told the story of General Pickett's baby. It was
during the last slaughterous days of the Civil War when the Confederates
locked horns with the Union soldiers outside of Richmond. It was the
cruelest time of the whole war. Then one night the Confederate lines were
lighted with bonfires, and the Union guards discovered that the Southern
troops were celebrating General Pickett's newborn baby, word of whose
arrival had just reached the army. General Grant was so moved by the event
that he ordered the Union lines to help the Confederates celebrate the birth
of Pickett's baby by lighting up the scene with additional bonfires.
The next day Grant's officers sent a graceful letter through the lines under
a flag of truce, communicating to General Pickett the congratulations of his
enemies!
Isn't that incredible?
For a moment, at least, the insanity and slaughter of war stopped, and good
will and peace prevailed - and it was all because of a baby!
We cannot hear that story and not think of the baby who was born in
Bethlehem. "His name will be called Jesus," announced the angel, "for he
will save his people from their sins." We cannot draw closer to the
Christ-child without also drawing closer to God, his Father, and as we draw
closer to God, our sinfulness decreases and the spirit of peace and goodwill
toward others and God increases.
John Thomas Randolph, The Best Gift, CSS, 1983, pp. 26.
Scripture: Jeremiah 29:11-13, Romans 8:28, Philippians 4:5-7
The Lord has only good plans in store for your life. When Satan tells you to worry, God has the opposite in mind. He wants you to trust him and to experience His peace on a daily basis.
How do we gain and retain the true peace of God?
1. Recognize your dependence is on God. Take responsibility for your actions, but let God have the reins to your life.
2. Pray. The enemy cannot defeat you when you are on your spiritual knees before God in prayer. This is the true pathway to unshakable peace.
3. Trust God, when thoughts of fear invade your mind. Tell the Lord what you are feeling and claim His presence as your protection and shelter.
4. Focus only on God. Don’t cling to negative thoughts. Set the focus of your heart on God and His possibilities. You can live life to the fullest because Christ is alive in you and all things are under His feet.
*
[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #16415]
In this part of the country Civil War wounds healed slowly. Not the ones caused by muskets and minie balls--the emotional ones. Some Southerners became really poor losers. Take Edwin Ruffin, for instance. Had a plantation on the James River about 30 miles downstream from Richmond. On April 12, 1861 he was in Charleston, SC. In the pre-dawn darkness of that morning he yanked the lanyard of the canon that fired the first shot on Ft. Sumter. He literally fired the first shot of the Civil War. After the war Ruffin refused to live in these United States. He committed suicide rather than rejoin the union.
On July 1-4, 1913 perhaps the greatest reunion in American history took place in Gettysburg, PA. Fifty years after Civil War's most decisive battle. After Pickett's Charge--when 15,000 Confederates failed to break the Union line--Robt. E. Lee and the South's fate were sealed. Thousands of former enemies--most in their 70s/80s, North and South--descended on Gettysburg. Considerable concern as there were still bitter feelings. The climax of the reunion was a re-enactment of Pickett's Charge.
FROM ARTICLE: "The centerpiece of the reunion took place at 3 P.M. on Thursday, July 3, when 120 veterans of Pickett's old Virginia Division assembled several hundred feet west of the famous stone wall that had marked the farthest reach of Pickett's Charge and the hopes of the Confederacy. East of the wall, 180 survivors of the Union's Philadelphia (Webb's) Brigade awaited their advance. Once again, standard bearers for both sides carried their units' battle flags. "We could see, not rifles and bayonets, but canes and crutches," spectator Philip Myers recorded of the now-thin line of Confederate veterans as they moved forward. "We ... could distinguish the more agile ones aiding those less able to maintain their places in the ranks." Finally only a few yards separated the old opponents, and "as the Rebel yell broke out after a half century of silence," wrote Myers, "a moan, a gigantic sigh, a gasp of unbelief, rose from the onlookers." It was then that the Yankees, unable to restrain themselves longer, burst from behind the stone wall, and flung themselves upon their former enemies. The emotion of the moment was so contagious that there was scarcely a dry eye in the huge throng." (Quotes from James W. Wensyel, "Return to Gettysburg," AMERICAN HISTORY ILLUSTRATED 28 [July/August 1993]:40-51.)
Professor Quincy Wright, in A STUDY OF WAR, shows that in the 461 years from 1480 to 1941 the various nations experienced wars as follows: Great Britain 78 wars, France 71, Spain 64, Russia 61, Austria 52, Germany 23, China 11, Japan 9, the United States 13, and in addition, 110 wars were fought, often ruthlessly, against the Indians within the United States.
Someone has pointed out that in the past four thousand years there has been less than three hundred years of peace. Even the most optimistic person is forced to admit that there is something seriously wrong with a world that has such a passion for destruction.
__________
Billy Graham, The Secret Of Happiness, pp. 141-42.
[see also HolwickID #11933]
"The Meaning of Peace"
There once was a King who offered a
prize to the artist who would paint the
best picture of peace. Many artists tried.
The King looked at all the pictures, but
there were only two he really liked, and
he had to choose between them.
One picture was of a calm lake. The
lake was a perfect mirror for the
peaceful towering mountains all around
it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy
white clouds. All who saw this picture
thought that it was a perfect picture of
peace.
The second picture had mountains, too.
But these were rugged and bare. Above
was an angry sky from which rain fell,
and in which lightening played. Down
the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming
waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.
But when the King looked, he saw behind
the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack
in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had
built her nest. There, in the midst of the
rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on
her nest.... a picture of a perfect peace.
Which of the pictures won the prize? The
King chose the second picture. Do you
know why?
"Because," explained the King, "peace
does not mean to be in a place where
there is no noise, trouble or hard work.
Peace means to be in the midst of all
those things and still be calm in your
heart. That is the real meaning of peace."
The story is told of a Russian named Ivanovich who visited the Moscow zoo for the first time. To his amazement, he found a little lamb sharing the cage with a big fierce bear.
Ivanovich expressed surprise to his guide. The guide smiled and said, “That is peaceful coexistence.”
When Ivanovich shook his head in a doubtful way, the guide explained, “Of course, we have to put in a fresh lamb every morning.”
As much as we should strive for peace, there are some things which simply cannot coexist peacefully -- truth and error, righteousness and ungodliness, morality and immorality.
If we try to combine two such things in our lives, they will only coexist “peacefully” only if one gobbles up the other. That’s why James was so forceful in his warning:
“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world
is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend
of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4, NASB)
Subject: The Peace Child
Date: For the Week of December 13, 1999
Don and Carol Richardson worked as missionaries among the Sawi people of Indonesia. When they went to these isolated, head-hunting cannibals in the early 1960s, they struggled to learn enough of their language to share the gospel. Finally Don climbed the ladder into the Sawi man-house and, surrounded by the skulls of cannibalized victims, began trying to teach in the terms and categories familiar to him.
Richardson told about Abraham and God's selection of the Jews. He explained about the Messiah and the Lamb of God. The Sawi were bored and unresponsive.
Although fascinated by the foreigners, the Sawi continued to fight each other. Tribal factions battled in sight of the Richardsons' jungle home. Fear and frustration led the missionaries to make a decision to leave. When tribal leaders learned of their plan, they said, "If you will stay, we promise to make peace in the morning."
Don and Carol Richardson witnessed an incredible ceremony the very next day. Two hostile groups were positioned opposite their house, on either side of a clearing. A tangible suspense wafted in the air between them. Finally, one man picked up his newborn child and dashed across the meadow. His wife ran after him, screaming and begging for her baby to be given back to her. Unable to catch him, she fell to her knees on the ground and sobbed for her infant.
The child's father presented his baby to the enemy clan. "Plead the peace child for me," he said. "I give you my son, and I give you my name." Soon thereafter, someone from the recipient tribe performed the same agonizing ritual in reverse. For as long as those peace children remained alive, the missionary was later told, the two warring factions were bound to each other in peace.
Richardson had his analogy of redemption! He soon climbed into the Sawi man-house again to tell the story of the ultimate Peace Child given to humankind by the one true God. Chiefs who had been unresponsive to the gospel sat spellbound. Over time, he continued to develop a theology based on Jesus, the Peace Child.
A matchless Christmas for Richardson and the Sawi came as first a few and finally hundreds of the once-warring, once-cannibalistic souls received Christ. A large group of new believers gathered for worship, and a Sawi man stood and read these words in his own language: "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).
As you read these familiar words this Christmas season, try to hear them with the ears of the Sawi. See Bethlehem's baby as the Peace Child. And receive the gift.
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping it will eat
him last."
- Winston Churchill
- _Instant Quotation Dictionary_, p. 66.
Two American Indians were
talking things over in a fox hole between air raids during World War II. "The way I figure it," one said, "is that when
they smoked the peace pope in 1918, nobody inhaled!"
In Maine I was sent for to visit a young lady who was dying, and
thought she had no desire to become a Christian. She was educated for
the medical practice, and when about ready to enter upon her chosen
profession, her lungs failed, and she died. She could only whisper
when I visited her. One of the pastors had just called, but she did
not wish to see him, as she had no desire, as she thought, to become a
Christian.
Although she knew she must die, yet her heart was so hard she said
she did not wish to converse on the subject of religion. In this state
she was passing into eternity.
The result, however, showed that she had a real desire to become a
Christian. As the Spirit convicts the world, I suppose there is more
or less conviction for sin and desire for religion in every heart.
I sat down near her bed, and after a few words of inquiry, taking
out of my pocket a pencil and paper, I said:
"Julia, if an angel out of heaven sat where I do, with a deed
written with the blood of Christ, leaving only a blank with room for
your name, and the seal of blood opposite the blank, holding a pen in
his hand dipped in Christ's blood, should say, 'Miss _____ if you will
write your full name in this blank, with this pen, you shall belong to
Christ forever,' would you write your name there? Do you think you
would hesitate?"
(I wish you all could have seen that pale, death-stricken face at
that moment.) She saw the point. She saw, in the light of the figure,
that she did desire to become a Christian. This satisfied her that the
desire was in her heart. She whispered, with what little strength she
had:
"I would."
I said:
"Julia, are you satisfied that you have some desire to become a
Christian?"
"I am," she replied.
I then asked her if she would like to have me kneel down and offer
a short prayer for her. She said:
"I would."
"Will you give yourself to Christ as far as you know, as far as you
understand yourself, while I am praying? You say, if by signing that
deed you could belong to Christ forever, you would do it. Now, will
you, instead of signing the deed, silently say, "Here, Lord, I do give
myself to thee; 'tis all that I can do?' "
"I will," she said.
I kneeled down, and while praying I felt the evidence of an answer.
The whole room seemed filled with the Divine Spirit.
After prayer I asked:
"Did you give yourself to Christ while I was praying, as far as you
know?"
She replied:
"I did."
Her answer was, with great firmness.
"Will you ever take it back?"
"Never."
When I left that room, I said to her:
"If you never take that back, I shall walk the golden streets with
you."
The young lady lingered for a few days, and continued to whisper
till the last minute of her life:
"Peace, peace, peace."
What she needed was to know how to give herself up as far as she had
light, and be persuaded to do it.
Let me ask the reader of this incident, if an angel held such a
deed and pen as I have just described to you, assuring you, if you
would sign your full name to it, you should belong to Christ forever,
would you sign it? Do you think you would? Is this not desire and
feeling enough to warrant an immediate action? Will you not do as this
young lady did, and be Christ's forever, and kneeling alone, say:
"Here, Lord, I do give myself to thee,
'Tis; all that I can do"
And never take this gift of yourself to the Saviour back. Pray
differently after this, "Jesus, let me know that I am accepted." Press
your suit for an answer to the prayer for this evidence. -- A. B.
Earle, From: "Incidents Used ... In His Meetings," published in 1888
There was a dispute which had grown into a lawsuit between two farmers as to just where the line between them was and where a fence should be. Finally one of the farmers sold out, and the purchaser moved in. Soon he met Farmer Smith, who was agitated and said to his new neighbor, “They tell me you have bought this farm, and I just want to inform you that you have bought a lawsuit.” He was asked to explain, and said, “Well, the fence, being located where it is, cheats me out of two feet of my land.” “Then,” said the newcomer kindly, “we will move it back four feet.” “No,” said Farmer Smith, “that is more than I ask.” “But,” said the new neighbor, “I would rather have peace with my neighbors than a few feet of earth!” “Then,” said Farmer Smith very quietly, “if that is the way you feel, the fence stays just where it is and the lawsuit is all off.”
The Bible says, “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”
I'm reminded of what happened just prior to World War II. Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, had a policy of appeasement in regards to Nazi Germany. Whatever Hitler wanted he gave in return for a guarantee of peace. As he got off the airplane he waved in the air the peace treaty signed by Hitler. He spoke bravely of "peace with honour" and "peace in our time." Just two weeks later Hitler's armies invaded Czechoslovakia.
I remember hearing of a young man who went to a minister of Christ
in great distress about his spiritual state. He said to the minister,
"Sir, can you tell me what I must do to find peace?" The minister
replied, "Young man, you are too late." "Oh!" said the young man, "you
don't mean to say I am too late to be saved?" "Oh, no," was the reply,
"but you are too late to do anything. Jesus did every thing that
needed to be done twenty centuries ago." --The Wonderful Word
On the basis of the computation in the Moscow Gazette, Gustave Valbert in his day could report that "From the year 1496 B.C. to A.D. 1861 in 3358 years there were 227 years of peace and 3,130 years of war, or 13 years of war to every year of peace. Within the last three centuries, there have been 286 wars in Europe. He added that from the year 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1860 more than 8,000 treaties of peace, meant to remain in force forever, were concluded. The average time they remained in force was two years."
===================================
Another version from Brett Blair, 9/22/03:
The Society of International Law, in London, states that during the last 4,000 years there have been only 268 years of peace. This in spite of thousands of good peace treaties over the centuries. In the last 300 years alone there have been 286 wars on the continent of Europe alone.
OR THIS VERSION OF THE SAME FACTS:
The Personnel Journal reported this incredible statistic: since the beginning of recorded history, the entire world has been at peace less than eight percent of the time! In its study, the periodical discovered that of 3530 years of recorded history, only 286 years saw peace. Moreover, in excess of 8000 peace treaties were made -- and broken.
__________
Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com, Sept 2003. Last statement taken from: Moody Bible Institute, Today In The Word, June, 1988, p.33.
[see also HolwickID #6822]
A young lady was dying, and one Scripture which she had heard in
health came to her at this time: "He was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of
our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed," and she
was led by the Holy Spirit to rest in him of whom it spoke, for
salvation. A friend said to her one day, "You suffer much, I fear."
"Yes," she said, "but," pointing to her hand, "there is no nail there.
He had the nails; I have the peace." Laying her hand on her brow, she
said, "There are no thorns here. He had the thorns; I have the peace,"
Touching her side she said, "There is no spear here.
He had the spear; I have the peace." --Young People's Delight
A reporter asked the late President Herbert Hoover, "Mr.
President, how do you handle criticism? Do you ever get
agitated or tense?" "No," President Hoover said, seemingly
surprised at the question, "of course not." "But," the
reporter went on, "when I was a boy you were one of the most
popular men in the world. Then, for a while you became one of
the most unpopular, with nearly everyone against you. Didn't any of
this meanness and criticism ever get under your skin?" "No, I knew
when I went into politics what I might expect, so
when it came I wasn't disappointed or upset," he said. He
lowered his familiar bushy eyebrows and looked directly into the
reporter's eyes. "Besides, I have 'peace at the center,' you know," he
added. Inner peace comes from looking to God, our source. Peace is
the gift of Jesus Christ. Jesus, before
leaving His disciples, said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give
to you". (\reference{John 14:27}{John 14:27})
Abie Nathan is leading a new children’s crusade! Nathan, who operates a pirate radio station aboard his “Peace Ship” in the Mediterranean, has promised to give a scroll with the biblical quotation from Isaiah, “And they shall not learn war any more...,” to any child who smashes his military toys. He has also offered to buy the complete stock of war toys from any store which agrees not to sell them in the future (newspaper item). We admire Nathan’s optimism. But there will be no peace on earth, no fulfillment of Isaiah’s great prophecy, until the Prince of peace returns to establish His rule on earth.
High atop a mountain between Argentina and Chile stands a massive
statue entitled "Christ of the Andes." The statue commemorates the
signing of a peace treaty in 1903 which ended a long-smoldering border
dispute between the two nations. The Argentine cannons which had
terrorized the Chileans were melted down and reshaped into the statue.
Engraved in Spanish at the base of the towering monument are these
words: "Sooner shall these mountains crumble into dust than
Argentines and Chileans break the peace sworn at the foot of Christ
the Redeemer."
Commendable as that hope may be, however, we know that military
alliances cannot ensure true peace. But in that upper room on his way
to the cross, Jesus promised His disciples His peace.
A young soldier was going off to fight in World War II against the Japanese. As his father put him on the train and waved good- bye, he turned with bitter tears and said, "If my son is killed, I hope every Jap in the world is killed!" A year later the son was killed. Soon $10,000 in life insurance money arrived. The father did a most surprising thing with the money: he sent it to the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and designated it for missions to the Japanese. How could the father do this? Obviously, he got the peace, the shalom, that Jesus speaks of in our text.
A minister once talked to a man about his soul and the man said he was
unsaved. The minister said, "You have no peace in your heart, you
need Jesus."
The man answered, "Oh, yes, I do, I am very happy."
But the minister answered, "No you do not. I have proof that you have
no peace. I know your heart is not content."
Rather angrily the man asked how he knew. He answered, "Because the
Bible says, 'There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.'"(Is.
57:21)
With downcast eyes and humble heart, he admitted that he was not
happy, that his heart was not content, that he had no rest for his
soul. (Rice--132)######
"We learned in our class that if you believe in peace, you can stay alive," said the eleven-year-old boy. "We learned that you should always find a peaceful way to solve your problems because you should never be violent."
Ironically, the boy lives a stone's throw from the Pentagon, where more than a hundred people, peacefully going about their business, were murdered by terrorists.
I wish peace-loving people could always "stay alive," but they don't. So why do teachers persist in telling kids otherwise?
In his new book, WHY WE FIGHT: MORAL CLARITY AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM, my friend, Bill Bennett, writes that teachers like these are seeking to "prevent another generation of young people from learning the proper uses of righteous anger."
The very idea that rage can be righteous has become a foreign concept. And Bennett wants to know why, in the wake of September 11, the country's elites "seem to back away from any hint of righteous anger as if it were some kind of poisonous snake? Why wasn't anger itself considered a moral response to the unprovoked attack on September 11?"
In part, he says, it's because the denigration of righteous wrath is linked to darker goals. By casting a shadow of moral doubt over justified anger secular liberals in the press and academia are "sowing and reinforcing doubt" about America's purposes.
These elites embrace an ideology, rooted in the Vietnam era, that sees America as an imperialistic power intent on imposing its will on others. Moreover, not believing in the Fall, they see all wars as the result of misunderstandings. They believe all violence is wrong and that wars never solve anything. To their way of thinking, America's motives cannot be trusted; our "jingoistic aggression", Bennett writes, can "only be checked by a countercommitment to nonviolence." Instead of getting angry with terrorists or waging another "imperialistic" war, we should blame ourselves -- figure out what we did to make them so mad.
This absurd, anti-American view has so permeated our culture that many citizens hesitated to express anger over the terror attacks.
But the morality of righteous wrath has been accepted throughout history as necessary for justice. "As the ancients recognized," Bennett notes, "anger is a necessary power of the soul, intimately connected with the passion for justice." The demand that we stifle our rage and negotiate with fanatics bent on wiping us out is thus immoral because it's a denial of justice.
And so teaching kids that all violence is wrong is morally bankrupt. "If no distinction is made among kinds of 'peace,'" Bennett warns, "children are deprived of the tools they require to distinguish a just from an unjust peace ([for example,] peace with honor from the peace of the grave.) They are robbed of the oldest and most necessary wisdom of the race, which is that some things are worth fighting and dying for."
We need to teach our kids why social liberals -- including, sometimes, their teachers -- claim that all violence and anger are wrong: It's an expression of hostility toward America itself and an inadequate understanding of sin and the need for justice. And we must make sure that they know why -- in the face of great evil -- getting angry isn't wrong. It's the necessary prologue to justice.
For further reading:
William Bennett, WHY WE FIGHT: MORAL CLARITY AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM (Doubleday, 2002).
_________________________
Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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Around Christmas 1944, Burt Frizen was fighting in the Battle of
the Bulge. Hit by enemy sharpnel, badly wounded, and unable to move,
he lay out on the battlefield, waiting for death or whatever was to
come. Much of the time during those six long hours he sang softly,
over and over again, the words of the song he had learned from his
mother, "There is a name to me most dear . . . like sweetest music to
my ear . . . for when my heart is troubled, filled with fear . . .
Jesus whispers peace."
He heard a sound nearby. Opening his eyes, he saw a German soldier
standing over him with a gun. {This is it} thought Burt as he
waited for the shot.
As Burt began to sing the song again, he felt the German lift him
in strong arms and place him on the ledge of a rock. His own medics
sported him a few minutes later and took him to safety. Jesus had
whispered peace in the midst of war.
During the riots in Detroit one summer, a bedsheet fluttered down
from a third-floor window, on which was scribbled what was probably
meant to be a prayer. In the midst of rubble and smoldering ruins
were these words PEACE ON EARTH.
A New Year editorial by the Nobel prize-winning scholar Elie Wiesel of Boston University concluded with these sentences:
"Humankind needs peace more than ever, for it has, more than ever, been saturated with violence and war. Now the entire planet is in danger. But peace is not God's gift to His creatures. It is our gift - to each other."
__________
Michael J. Hostetler, Illustrating the Sermon, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989) 50
If there is light in the soul, There will be beauty in the person. If
there is beauty in the person, There will be harmony in the house. If
there is harmony in the house, There will be order in the nation. If
there is order in the nation, There will be peace in the world.
- Chinese Proverb
It used to be that just one superpower had missiles which could carry deadly destruction to American soil. But in today's post-Cold War world, there are several countries that either have or may soon have that capability. Which has necessitated some fresh thinking about America's defense against a missile attack. That, in turn, has birthed the idea of anti-missile missiles - a controversial plan that launches defensive missiles to pre-empt and destroy an incoming enemy missile.
Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Knocking Down The Missiles."
Now look, I don't know if the idea of destroying an incoming missile is workable or advisable for our national defense. But I do know that the Kingdom of God could use more people who knock down verbal missiles before they do a lot of damage. Just look around your church, your circle of Christians. Too much gossip and backstabbing? Too much misunderstanding between spiritual brothers and sisters? Do you see walls and hard feelings and disunity developing?
You can be part of the answer - if you'll commit yourself to seven little words that can knock down the missiles that destroy the unity and love of Jesus' followers. They're based on our word for today from the Word of God in Matthew 18:15. Jesus said, "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault..." Now, notice the scope of your complaint: "...just between the two of you." That could be one of the most disobeyed commands of our Lord - and one of the most damaging disobediences.
We go and talk to everyone but the person we've got the problem with. We would far rather talk about them than to them. And that raises the question of whether we really want a solution or just an audience for our gripes. Now for those seven anti-missile words. When a person comes to you with something negative about another person, get used to saying these words: "Don't talk to me. Talk to him (or, talk to her)." Every time you do that, you are standing up for the Jesus-way and standing against Satan's attempts to divide God's children.
The Bible says that "the words of a gossip are like choice morsels" (Proverbs 18:8) - we love to hear the dirt, in other words. But God doesn't. He says, "A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends," (Proverbs 16:28) and "whoever spreads slander is a fool." (Proverbs 10:18) The mission of someone who loves Jesus is to contain negative talk, not spread it. And to go direct yourself when you have a problem with another person. You can try to avoid doing it the Biblical way by saying, "Well, they won't listen" or "What good will it do?" Well, really that doesn't matter. Jesus says your responsibility is to go to your brother or sister and to keep it - remember the words? - "just between the two of you."
There are way too many missiles being fired by God's children at God's children. And no army can win when they are aiming their weapons at each other. The good news is that you can do something about it. You can show people another way to be - actually, the Jesus way to be. When you hear something negative about a brother or sister, say those seven words - "Don't talk to me. Talk to her (or, talk to him)." You can knock down some missiles that otherwise could hurt a lot of people.
________________
Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"
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Interview With A Gerbil
Read: Psalm 34
Seek peace and pursue it. --Psalm 34:14
With appealing humor, Ron Hutchcraft, busy author, speaker, and counselor, tells about his battle with stress. One day Ron decided to "interview" the family gerbil.
"Tell me, Gerbie," Ron asked, "what do you have planned for today?"
"First, breakfast," he replied, "and then get started."
"Doing what?" Ron questioned.
"Why, the same thing I did yesterday, and the day before that."
"What's that?" Ron asked again.
"The wheel."
And sure enough, Gerbie climbed on his little wheel and started running in circles. Hours later, he was still running.
The more Ron watched that gerbil, the more he saw himself. He had his own personal "wheels"--demands, deadlines, aggravations, ambitions. He felt as if he was running in circles, and he longed for peace. In his search, he made this discovery in Psalm 34: Peace isn't automatic or passive; it must be pursued. Not only that, but peace is also a result of a right relationship with the Lord.
As never before, Ron enthroned the Lord as the Shepherd of his life. As he did, peace, instead of the stressful wheel, became normal. Which will be normal for you today? --JEY
Give me a heart of calm repose
Amid the world's loud roar,
A life that like a river flows
Along a peaceful shore. --Anon.
For peace that lasts, put God first.
1. There's a peace in my heart
That the world never gave,
A peace it cannot take away;
Though the trials of life
May surround like a cloud,
I've a peace that has come there to stay!
Chorus
Constantly abiding Jesus is mine
Constantly abiding rapture divine
He never leaves me lonely, whispers Oh so kind,
"I will never leave thee", Jesus is mine.
2. All the world seemed to sing
Of a Saviour and King,
When peace sweetly came to my heart
Troubles all fled a way
And my night turned to day,
Blessed Jesus, how glorious Thou art!
3. This treaure I have
In a temple of clay,
While here on His footstool I roam
But He's coming to take
Me some glorious day,
Over there to my heavenly home!
*
1. O Christ, in Thee my soul hath found,
And found in Thee alone,
The peace, the joy I sought so long,
The bliss till now unknown.
Chorus
Now none but Christ can satisfy,
None other name for me;
There's love, and life, and lasting joy,
Lord Jesus, found in Thee.
2. I sighed for rest and happiness,
I yearned for them, not Thee;
But while I passed my Saviour by,
His love laid hold on me.
3. I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,
But ah! the waters failed!
E'en as I stooped to drink they'd fled,
And mocked me as I wailed.
4. The pleasures lost I sadly mourned,
But never wept for Thee,
Till grace the sightless eyes received,
Thy loveliness to see.
*
1. The joy of the Lord is my strength,
The joy of the Lord is my strength,
The joy of the Lord is my strength,
The joy of the Lord is my strength.
2. The word of faith is nigh thee even in thy mouth,
The word of faith is nigh thee even in thy mouth,
The word of faith is nigh thee even in thy mouth,
The joy of the Lord is my strength.
3. He gives me living waters and I thirst no more,
He gives me living waters and I thirst no more,
He gives me living waters and I thirst no more,
The joy of the Lord is my strength.
*
1. Does Jesus care when my heart is pained
Too deeply for mirth and song –
As the burdens press, and the cares distress,
And the way grows weary and long?
Chorus
O yes, He cares – I know He cares!
His heart is touched with my grief;
When days are weary, the long nights dreary,
I Know my Saviour cares.
2. Does Jesus care when my way is dark
With a nameless dread and fear?
As the daylight fades into the deep night shades
Does He care enough to be near?
3. Does Jesus care when I've tried and failed
To resist some temptation strong?
When for my deep grief I find no relief,
Tho' my tears flow all th night long?
4. Does Jesus care when I've said goodbye
To the dearest on earth to me,
And my hear aches till it nearly breaks –
Is it aught to Him? Does He see?
*
The apex of the Beatitudes is found in these words, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are called the children of God." Peacemaking is described as a fundamental characteristic of believers.
The Messiah was to be called "The Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6). The familiar Old Testament benediction concludes with, "The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace" (Numbers 6:26). Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you" (John 14:27). The Christian gospel itself is called "the gospel of peace" (Acts 10:36; Ephesians 6:15), and the Holy Spirit himself produces the fruit of peace (Colossians 3:15; Galatians 5:22).
Peace is not merely the absence of war. The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, refers to a state of harmony, prosperity, well-being and completeness. The New Testament word, eirene, refers to harmony in relationships, where strife and discord is replaced with harmonious relationship.
There are three foundational areas where Christians are called to make peace: with God, between Christians and corporately in society.
The first is personal and "vertical": "Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1). Because of Christ's redemptive work on the cross and our entering into a trusting relationship with him, our great war with God is over, and we have peace with God.
The second area is "horizontal" reconciliation within the body of Christ. Ephesians 2:13-17 says, "You who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace.... He has... reconciled both groups to God in one body through the cross."
The third area involves corporate peacemaking in the society at large. "If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all" (Rom 12:18).
The BF&M statement is very specific that this corporate peacemaking is to be based on "principles of righteousness." In other words the peace to be sought is not "peace at any price" -- which is transitory and an illusion -- but rather peace that is based on God's justice and righteousness. Once I saw a bumper sticker that said, "If you want peace, work for justice." In the Beatitudes, righteousness comes before peacemaking. In Romans 14:17 Paul summarizes that the kingdom of God is "righteousness" and "peace" -- in that order. The prophet Isaiah (32:17) also affirmed that "the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever."
Where unrighteousness, injustice and wickedness dwell, there can be no peace (Isa 48:22). The reason for this is that unrighteousness sustains division, discord, pain and strife. So whether in personal, familial, business, school or international relationships, there will not be biblical peace (healthiness, harmony) unless it is founded on God's righteousness.
The BF&M statement calls upon the faithful to "do all in their power to put an end to war." While some have suggested that must mean unilateral disarmament, Baptists have not understood the statement in this way and have usually taken the position that sometimes in order to establish a just and righteous peace, following the Augustinian tradition, a "just war" must be engaged.
After all is said and done, the supreme task for believers is to "pray for the reign of the Prince of Peace" and look forward to that day when his will will in fact be done on earth even as it is being perfectly done even now in heaven.
______________________________________
Full text of Article 16: Peace and War
It is the duty of Christians to seek peace with all men on principles of righteousness. In accordance with the spirit and teachings of Christ they should do all in their power to put an end to war.
The true remedy for the war spirit is the gospel of our Lord. The supreme need of the world is the acceptance of His teachings in all the affairs of men and nations, and the practical application of His law of love. Christian people throughout the world should pray for the reign of the Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 2:4; Matthew 5:9,38-48; 6:33; 26:52; Luke 22:36,38; Romans 12:18-19; 13:1-7; 14:19; Hebrews 12:14; James 4:1-2.
_________________
Parker is a professor of worldview and culture and an associate dean of worldview and culture in the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
*
The Peace-Of-Mind Game
Read: Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. --Psalm 23:1
In her down-to-earth book More Than Sparrows, Mary Welch tells of her discussion with a group of high schoolers about worry. Although they were Christians, they were as worried as pagans about the common things of life. As she listened to them with love, yearning to help them, an unusual idea came to her for a game they could play. It went like this:
Instead of saying, "I'm worried," stop and say, "The Lord is my Shepherd." Then add, "So I'm worried to death!" The students laughed at the idea, but they all promised to play this new "peace-of-mind" game.
Later Mary received a phone call from a young woman who had been paralyzed by worry over an exam she had been dreading to take. She said, "I must tell you how the game helped me trust God today. As I froze with worry, I remembered to say, 'The Lord is my Shepherd . . . so I'm afraid I'll fail!' Suddenly I felt the strangest peace of mind. I laughed at myself, then I took the exam and passed!"
Saying in one breath, "The Lord is my Shepherd and I am worried to death" is more than a mind game to point out the absurdity of worry. God can use it to bring us to a fuller trust in Him. --JEY
Into His hands I lay the fears that haunt me,
The dread of future ills that may befall;
Into His hands I lay the doubts that taunt me,
And rest securely, trusting Him for all. --Christiansen
Worry is the interest you pay on borrowed trouble.
Three Sisters
Read: Romans 4:1-11
To Timothy, a true son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. --1 Timothy 1:2
Grace, mercy, and peace are the three sisters of salvation. In these three words we have the gospel in capsule form. They sum up our complete salvation in Jesus Christ.
Grace is the foundation of our redemption, mercy is the manifestation of our redemption, and peace is the consummation.
Grace points to the past--our salvation goes back "before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4). Mercy speaks of the present--it is manifested to us day by day. And peace is the consummation because it makes our future secure.
Grace is receiving what we do not deserve. Mercy is not receiving what we do deserve. We deserve to go to hell, but by His mercy we shall never go there. We do not deserve to go to heaven, but by grace we'll spend eternity there. Grace justifies. Mercy pardons. Grace admits us to heaven. Mercy saves us from hell. The death of Christ was enough to pardon us in mercy, but it took the resurrection to effect our justification. He "was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification" (Rom. 4:25).
And now, by faith, we have "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1). --M. R. De Haan
[Our Lord] took death upon Himself
On that cruel cross of pain,
And those who look in faith to Him
Eternal life shall gain! --Johnson
None live so serenely, so pleasantly, and so triumphantly as those who walk by faith.
Three Keys To Peace
Read: Psalm 121
Happy are the people whose God is the Lord! --Psalm 144:15
When W. B. Davidson was a young boy, he walked with his father 3 miles from his rural home to his grandmother's house. While they were visiting, the sun set. Davidson writes, "Between our home and grandmother's house was a swamp. That night the croaking of the frogs, the chirping of the crickets, and the shadows of the trees frightened me. I asked my father if there was any danger of something catching us, but he assured me that there was nothing to dread. And so, taking me by the hand, he said, 'I will not allow anything to harm you.' Immediately my fears passed away and I was ready to face the world."
Someone has said that the three keys to real peace are: fret not, faint not, fear not.
1. Fret not--because God loves you (1 Jn. 4:16).
2. Faint not--because God holds you (Ps. 139:10).
3. Fear not--because God keeps you (Ps. 121:5).
As we rest in the love of Christ and recognize that God holds our hand, we too shall be at peace and unafraid. The "three keys to real peace"--fret not, faint not, fear not--can open our prison of worry and discouragement. Let's step out into the full joy and liberty of the children of God! --Henry G. Bosch (ODB Editor 1956-1981)
When the way is dim, and I cannot see
Through the mist of His wise design,
How my glad heart yearns and my faith returns
By the touch of His hand on mine. --Pounds
© 1913 Hope Publishing Company
The perfect antidote for fear is trust in God.
Ilustrace: Slyšel jsem o jedné umìlecké soutìží v malování. Téma bylo pokoj. Tøetí místo obsadil obrázek, který zobrazoval loï pøi západu slunce na klidném jezeøe. Druhé místo obsadil obrázek, kde mladá maminka držela svoje první dítì.
Ale první místo obsadil obrázek, který zachycoval krutou bouøi. Vítr ohýbal stromy, ale úplnì dole bylo namalováno ptaèí hnízdo. Matka chránila své malièké pod svými køídly. A na tom obrázku bylo možné vidìt, že tito malí ptáèci spí. A název znìl: Pokoj v bouøi?
Chci aby jste vìdìli, že takový druh pokoje nám Bùh zaslibuje. Ne únik z bouøe, ne tìlo nedotknutelné nemocemi, ale pokoj uprostøed tlaku, stressu a bouøí života. Ježíš pøed ukøižováním øekl uèedníkùm: Pokoj vám zanechám, svùj pokoj vám dávám; ne jako dává svìt, já vám dávám. A se vaše srdce nechvìje a nedìsí! Jan 14,27
Horatio Spafford, a businessman in Chicago, sent his wife and three daughters to Europe by ship while he remained back in the States, intending to join them later. En route there was a terrible storm and a shipwreck during which their three daughters drowned. Mrs. Spafford made it to safety and wired back saying, “All of our daughters have been lost. Only I have been saved.”
He took the next vessel. As they came near the place where his daughters drowned, the skipper of the ship pointed to the place where the other ship had gone down. It was there on the deck of the ship he wrote these stirring words:
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
“It is well, it is well with my soul.”
__________
The Tale Of The Tardy Oxcart
Charles R. Swindoll, Word, pp. 431-432.
Upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa said:
"What can you do to promote world peace?
Go home and love your family."
Cited in BITS & PIECES
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