The path to peace
Day 334, Friday, July 11
Isaiah Chapter 48
“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”
We want peace. We crave peace. Yet somehow we manage to always bring consternation and chaos into our own souls, blocking the very peace we pray for.
Chapter 48 lays out in stark and unmistakeable terms why it is that we don’t have peace, and what it would take to attain it.
In verses 17-19, God says, “I am the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea.
“Your descendants would have been like the sand, your children like its numberless grains; their name would never be blotted out nor destroyed from before me.”
The key to attaining peace is really simple: stop fighting against God. We can call this repentance or surrender or holiness or by any other names, each with its own particular emphasis, but they all amount to the same thing: we make the decision to live life on God’s terms, not our own.
This chapter ends with, “There is no peace for the wicked.”
We can have trouble believing this because we misunderstand both peace and wickedness.
Peace is more than just the absence of visible conflict. More importantly it is the absence of internal conflict. Consider the Apostle Paul when he speaks of his many afflictions—he lived a life that was externally far from peaceful, yet his writings show him to be a model of the peaceful life.
“Wickedness” isn’t a term reserved just for the worst of the worst as we tend to use it: it is for all who fall short of the kingdom of God.
Friday meditation
Job 5:1-7
“Call if you will, but who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn?
Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.
I myself have seen a fool taking root, but suddenly his house was cursed. His children are far from safety, crushed in court without a defender. The hungry consume his harvest, taking it even from among thorns, and the thirsty pant after his wealth.
For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground.
Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.
Prayer focus
Lord, grant us peace.
-Rev. Mark Fleming