Peace is not a Feeling

A while ago God allowed the devil to place a dark spot on my heart because of my pride .  On the outside, things were fine, but on the inside my brain was going crazy.  I was so concerned with why I wasn’t good enough, what was I lacking, jealousy, thinking of why others weren’t better than me; that I lost my inner peace.  It took hitting this low point to realize that I have been searching for this peace in the wrong places.  I realized how much I care about awards and honors and being able to prove to others that I am a good person.  I had been expecting something for a really long time, something that I felt I deserved and would show to the world how ‘great’ of a person I was.  When I didn’t get it, I was really taken aback.  I couldn’t understand what I was missing.  The devil has been following me everywhere with these thoughts of confusion and jealousy and really caused a lot of doubt in me about who I was.  It took going on a retreat I didn’t think I needed to open my eyes. 

A seminarian spoke to us about peace.  He said that peace is not a feeling.  Which is a slight twist on things because you so often hear people say, ‘I feel peaceful.’  This is how I was searching for peace.  I was searching for the feeling that I thought I would get from being perect.  From having great friends, a great life and great honors.  The problem was that I had gotten plenty of honors in the past, but where did it lead me? Not to peace, it leads me to just search for that next honor or that next accomplishment so that I could feel peace by knowing that I was succeeding at being this ‘great’ person. 

Long story short, what he said was that peace is not a feeling, peace is a person.  Peace is knowing so deep down in your soul who you are, a child willed into existence by God to be loved by him and to join him on the path of showing the world love.  What does peace by this true definition mean? It means that even when the worst possible thing in your life goes wrong (or littlest). That it’s not about you.  It’s about Jesus.  Peace allows us to know Jesus so intimately that we fully rest in him knowing that no matter what the situation is, God will will good to come through it and by enduring these trials, we are understanding how little this life means and accepting the truth that we will live forever in eternity with God, (hopefully).

This is the peace that I want.  Not the feeling of peace that is never achieved because I am always needing more, but peace from knowing confidently that by fully giving my life to God and those around me through sacrificing and suffering and love, that I might have true peace in knowing that I will spend eternity in Heaven with God.  If I knew the true meaning of peace I would not have been crushed by not getting acknowledgment for all that I have done.  I would have found peace because I knew that all my actions were done for love of God and not because I was seeking recognition from those around me.

Peace is not a feeling.  Peace is a person.  Peace is Jesus Christ.