Tranquility

Your quiet soul is not trying to get away from you. Your quiet soul is waiting, waving, trying to get your attention. Peace is looking for you. Nobody can cheat you out of it. Nobody can rob you of it, not with gossip, not with abandonment, not with gerrymandering.

If you’re Ukrainian, not the Russian army.

Nothing can shake it out of you, not with a surprise financial obligation, not with an alarming medical diagnosis, not with massive life changes.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

When Jesus said those words, he was on his way to the worst day of his life. Not only that, but He lived during a period called the “Pax Romana” where the powers-that-be decided that because the army contained internal violence, it was a peaceful period.

But we only call it a “period” in retrospect because they thought their imperial peace was eternal.

Whatever one calls it, “Paradise,” “Heaven,” “Elysium,” “Valhalla,” or “Yomi,” The Roman attitude was that of a people who had reached the highest level of peace and prosperity. But their peace, the “Pax Romana,” was maintained by military occupation. It was peace by force. Jesus’ life and teachings were about internal peace.

You don’t find security by threat and intimidation. Rome’s dominion was not eternal, nor was its peace. We are too quickly drawn to the Roman kind of peace and tell ourselves that the Jesus kind of peace is unachievable or even nonexistent.

Be still. Be quiet.

Now, there’s your soul peace.