“If you want to enjoy life and see many happy days, keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it. The eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right, and his ears are open to their prayers. But the Lord turns his face against those who do evil.”
-1 Peter 3:10-12 (NLT)
I’ve been thinking a lot about this piece
of scripture since I read it a few weeks back.
Something about the way that the scripture speaks of peace just really
resonated with me.
To me, peace is something that I’ve never
really given a thought about. If I had
to boil it down to a process, there’s a moment when you hit peace, you realize
it, you pump your fist and you carry on.
Or at least, that’s the way I’ve always perceived it.
The scripture says that we must “work to
maintain it”. It may sound nerdy, but I
started thinking about the science behind ‘work’. From a physics standpoint, work is the dot
product of a force and a displacement.
The displacement implies that there must be some movement behind it;
some change between where you’re at and where you’re going. Peace is something that’s dynamic; it isn’t
something that’s just achieved. Peace is
something that must be maintained and it needs work. It isn’t something passive, but rather
something that is active; it’s moving, it has life.
I think about the relationships I have with
the people around me, both family and friends and I believe I’m a peaceful
person.
I think about growing up at home, my
relationship with both my siblings and parents.
If I look at the big picture, we hardly fought. I can count on one hand the number of major
arguments I’ve had with my parents.
There were always disagreements, but never “fights”. The same goes for me and my siblings. In fact, I don’t know that we’ve ever fought
(if they’re reading this, maybe you can remind me if we did?). I think it’s why whenever my friends tell me
that they get into arguments with their siblings, I get curious. How does that come about and what sort of
things would you argue about?
Then I look at the relationships I have
with my friends, and the arguments are even less than the ones above
combined. But if anything, I’ve probably
offended people by things I’ve said, opinions and thoughts prematurely
spouted. So if I’ve ever made anyone
feel “unpeaceful” with me, I am sorry.
And then I have to think about the
relationship with myself. You know that
place where the head, heart and soul collide?
This is the area in my life with the most unrest, the most fights and
the most wars. This, dear reader, is
where I can say that there isn’t as much peace.
Between these three parts, one is always battling another, or, there’s a
handicap match, or, there’s a triple threat match. The internal struggle is like a prowrestling
dream!
So how shall I bring peace amongst these
rivals? And what can be done to maintain
it?
I’m thinking that something that needs to
be maintained would require consistency, and when I think of consistency as a
Christian, the first thing that pops into my mind is prayer. Prayer needs to be continual.
And when I look at myself, it makes sense,
I think that’s why there’s that feeling of unrest lately – I haven’t been
praying as consistently as I used to.
It’s been playing second fiddle to the iPad or a Batman book (note: I
can only hope that by realizing this, that God won’t smote the iPad or the
Batman books… I’m learning my lesson, no need for drastic measures, God). So I’ve been changing my prayer habits
recently. Rather than praying one large
prayer at a certain time, I’ll pray shorter prayers throughout the day, when
I’m reminded that there’s something that I need to pray about.
Either way, I realize that I need to
strengthen this part of my spiritual life.
I need focus and I think that focus will bring about peace. But again, it’s something I’ll need to work
at.
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