Without a doubt it is this: The Peace of Christ is the greatest gift anyone can have.
When one has it, one must safeguard it above all other things. One must work to protect it, preserve it, maintain it, and nourish it. One must allow it to grow, prosper, blossom, flourish, and spread. Indeed, it is a living thing! It is the very life--the eternal life--that God has given us! We are fully alive when we have it.
It has taken me this long (my life of 37 years) to finally realize that the greatest inhibitors to my Peace of Christ are materialistic greed and the ridiculous mode of rushing. Indeed, when I indulge too much in the pleasures of buying or when I fall into the notion that I must rush myself or the children, His Peace is disrupted within me (and perhaps equally so in the people that surround me). And repeated disruptions begin to dissolve it until I find myself in the throws of what I can only describe as unrest, uneasiness, and needless anxiety.
And so I have charged myself with a new mission in this new liturgical year. I desire to be an ambassador of the Peace of Christ, lowly as I am (but equally as eager) to bring His Peace to others I encounter. This will be a task I cannot complete without your many prayers because I so often find myself browsing online, dreaming of my next purchase, or mismanaging my time which then results in a need to rush or the vanity of believing that I am too busy or important to slow down for the comfort of others.
I am listening intently to my heart these days, trying to notice immediately when the Peace of Christ feels disrupted and to immediately take different steps to put Him back in His sovereign place.
May the Peace of Christ reign supreme in your hearts!
