Peace

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The above verses from Paul’s letter to the Philippians [vv. 6-7] have been in my mind for three or four weeks now. I shared them with a lady at my Wednesday night small group because she was finding it difficult to know what to do in a situation where she wasn’t happy. This lady is a Christian and a woman who I respect because of her gentle way and her heart for Christ. I am sure she was praying this situation through and laying it all out before God but, when she mentioned it that evening, the verses came to me in a flash and I had a strong urge to mention them to her. (I hadn’t even been reading Philippians recently!)

In particular, the notion of peace that the verses talk about has been in my mind. What is peace? Well, I guess it’s one of those unfortunate English words that mean many things to many people. It can mean a cessation of hostilities between people, it can be the absence of hostilities between people. There can be peace between individuals and families, and there can be peace of mind. Here in Northern Ireland, when someone talks about peace it is very obvious that one person’s definition of peace differs from the next and always means someone getting their own way.

What peace is Paul talking about though? ειρηνη is the Greek that is used (transliteration: eirene) and literally means peace and, grammatically, is linked to God. It is “God’s peace”. Just as God’s love is upon me and God’s grace works through me, God’s peace can be within me. But how can I receive this peace? In a world that is all about noise, business, busyness and distraction, how can peace coexist with everything else within me?

Some would have me shut myself away from the world, from all that would upset my inner self. They would have me enter into either Stoicism or some indefinite meditation. Either way, I would become indifferent to all that goes on around me. That goes against what the Bible tells me though. I am to feed the hungry, clothe the naked. I am to preach the good news through word and action. How can a Stoic do that without empathising, which would break away from his indifference? How can a mystic do that without have to open his eyes and stop sitting on his hands in meditation?

So what is God’s peace? Can it even be defined completely and truthfully with words? If it can, I think it is the job of the poet to attempt rather than a scientist like me. However, I have experienced it first hand. I know what it is to have this peace smother me, to pervade, to permeate my very being.

God’s peace is something (if it is even a thing) that should not be asked for because that would be missing the point. His peace is given to help me see the way through a struggle, to see the path out of where I am at to where I should be. If only I would pray about the things that trouble me!

God has adopted me as His son, and therefore wants me to treat Him as I would a father. He wants me to talk to Him about stuff that troubles me. He wants me to share my inmost thoughts and troubles so that ours is a relationship of truth, honesty and without pretense.

Maybe the peace that is offered is more that just a help in times of trouble, maybe it’s an incentive to get me to talk to Him… to get me to treat Him like my heavenly dad.

Worship in every form

I’ve been meditating on the words a friend said to me via an email this week. She was talking about worshipping God in different settings. For example, it can be easy to worship at the concert-like event called Worship Belfast but it is much harder at 11am each Sunday morning service. But the fact is that if I can’t worship sincerely “in spirit and in truth” in both settings, then is what I term worship really worship at all?

What she said is so simple, yet it struck me as incredibly profound. It is easy for me to criticise the Presbyterian church in general and the methods employed by my own church in particular as being old fashioned, dated and out of touch. But what is the point of such criticism? Is it so that I can mould church services into a form of entertainment and something that I enjoy? If so, then I hope I never succeed.

After little research I came across an old book (no date) from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. It is a study course publishd by the Training of Church Members Committee and speaks a little on the topic at hand.

Our Presbyterian forms of worship have been “simple” and some would say austere. We have been careful to ensure that forms should not become the object of our worship but the means we use.

Regardless of the form, I should be able to worship God sincerely “in spirit and in truth”. If I can’t then my eyes are not on Him; instead they are focussed on the incidental, the temporal… merely the means.