“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.” The more I
live the more I know this to be true.
When we fix our minds on Him, as Brother Laurence describes in The
Practice of the Presence of God, we find peace because we have fixed our minds
on that which is both eternal and unchangeable while the world around us, all
else we could fix our minds upon, is ever changing and time-bound. We are too often unsettled, people of
double-minds, and when we are it is because we are distracted by the immediate
rather than resting in the eternal. We
have duties and obligations in the world, we have also emergencies and crises,
but if we settle ourselves in faith and are of a single mind about Him then we
actually perform better in those situations.
How much time have I wasted in considering all the potential outcomes of
a decision and how it will affect others when I don’t actually know either the
probable outcomes or their expected values.
Peace is an outcome of staying our minds on Him and trusting in
Him. The chicken and egg question is
answered right there.
Here’s is another testable truth claim, “I am the light of
the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the
light of life.” We can test that claim
by following Him can’t we? Sometimes we
think of the words of Jesus as simply words to memorize when they are actually
challenges to us to live out. He makes a
very clear claim that if we follow Him we will not walk in darkness, but will
have the light of life. The light of the
world, in Jewish thought, was that first light that God spoke into being. That light dispelled the darkness, the
darkness that was over the face of the deep.
Because it was first it was essential, the light of the world. Torah is light, David says the word of God is
a lamp to his feet and a light to His path.
God has always given man light and has always bidden us to follow where
He leads. In Jesus, we have both the
light of the world manifest and the Word of God, light also, manifest. He is the one on whom we are called to stay
our minds and trust in Him and His promise is peace.
I love this statement of Paul’s, “Even though we once regarded
Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.” Paul knows that he indeed once regarded
Christ according to the flesh and he made an enormous mistake, so he has given
up trying to make a judgment based on earthly wisdom about anything or
anyone. In Christ we are to be new
creations and that means that we no longer make earthly judgments about things
like good and evil, we see beyond the surface and know truth. We are ambassadors for Christ in the work of
reconciliation. We tend to think of that
as proclamation of the Gospel in words but an ambassador does more than that,
his life is tied up completely in his work, everything an ambassador does
represents his country. Some of the
worst ambassadorial failures have to do with life screw-ups not
proclamations. Following Jesus and
walking in the light is a lifestyle issue.
If we want peace we have to be literally new creations in thought, word
and deed.
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