Peace in Practice

Hello friends,
welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are concluding our short mini-series
today.
We are talking about peace and this time looking at it in practice.
You know,
I think Clint, as we reflected last conversation,
there’s a sense in which peace is always a
concern.
For some, it’s actually one of those chief practices of the soul,
the soil that they tend most often because they may be anxious individuals.
They may struggle with fear and sort
of processing what should I do.
And for some people,
they even have this real sense that they
lack agency in their life,
that they can’t make progress forward.
And for those people,
peace is always one of those spiritual disciplines of the faith.
One of the commands actually were given in
scripture to fear not.
That may be one of the most generative and difficult places to toil.
But I think what is true now,
which may not be true all the time,
is we live in a moment in which I think
a lot of people have been caught up in this larger net of anxiety and fear.
We live in turbulent times in a difficult moment.
And we’re doing that at both a national and global scale.
And so in the midst of that,
we talked a little bit last week about what it looks like to be
people who receive that command to fear not,
to engage as Christians in this express desire to
be people of peace.
And we’re going to talk this week a little bit about what it looks like for us
to turn and lean into that,
to practice peace, to make it an intentional part of our life and faith.
And we hope to be both practical in that and maybe even a little inspirational.
I think sometimes one of the struggles is we conceive of peace as all or nothing.
And so
when someone hears that we should be at peace,
I think sometimes there’s a temptation to think
that that means we should have no worry,
we should have no conflict,
that we should be
a hundred percent tranquil all the time.
And that would be nice,
but that’s not how it works.
And so as we talk today about some of the ways that we may instill some greater degree of peace in our life,
understand that that’s a gradient,
that that’s a sliding scale.
And wherever we are,
we can work on allowing more of God’s peace into our inner life, which then hopefully
transmits to our outer life as well.
So if you don’t think you can get from where you are to worry free,
that’s exactly okay.
That is in fact how it works.
And the idea is that as we work on peace,
we become better able to practice it,
to achieve it, to enjoy it, to recognize it, and to recognize those things that get in its way.
But that is very much a process.
It is not something we’re finished with.
And I think you’re right,
Michael, in this season,
so many people have been anxious for so many different reasons that even in a time of being
distanced, we’re aware of these greater conversations.
And some of that disquiet
then spills into our own life.
And for those who struggle with anxiety and being anxious,
I can imagine this is an almost unprecedented kind of time.
An image that really has been helpful for me as we framed these few short conversations was,
you know, I myself am not a mechanic.
I don’t really understand how cars work.
Like someone like Tom Ditsworth, how he could rebuild a car if you gave him the parts,
he could make some of
the parts.
You know, for me, I bring my car in with a great amount of faith that the person who’s
looking at it is being honest.
And a thing that I do find helpful is when you bring your car in
and someone who’s equipped and skilled looks at the vehicle and then they come back with a sheet
of paper and there’s little check boxes and this looks good and this looks good.
And then if there’s a spot,
you know, this may not need fix,
but you might want to take a look at it.
That becomes an opportunity for me to ask the question and to learn something.
Well, what is that part?
What does it do?
How important is it?
How soon am I going to have to save to fix it?
That kind of thing.
And I wonder if this conversation isn’t a lot like that.
No one here at this table is an expert in peace.
Neither one of us sort of walks around in an always state of placidness.
But the reality is
there are a lot of things in the faith that help us as we seek to pursue discipleship and to practice
these things that lead us towards a life in which peace is present,
which the spirit of peace
resides within us.
And I think, Clint, that the way to get there is much like the car.
You need someone and in this case,
it’s ourselves to do some self-diagnosis.
We have to ask some
questions about am I living peacefully?
Am I experiencing peace?
Am I recognizing the spirit
of peace in me?
And I think there’s a few markers that we could point to that would help us
to sort of ascertain how we’re doing right now.
Right. There are symptoms, right?
I mean, when your car makes a noise,
you try to figure out why it hasn’t made that noise before when a
light goes on on the dashboard.
And as we talked,
Michael, the idea was what are some of the warning
lights that may be present in our life?
And sometimes we may tend to ignore them,
but what are the signals that our life gives us to indicate that we maybe are struggling in a moment
of being ill at ease or being anxious?
What does it look like?
What are the traits that lacking
peace looks like?
And I think we can point to several.
And now, again, these are things that
are sort of present in every life.
But if the frequency of them,
if the intensity of them
feels like it has increased lately,
then I think maybe that’s a place we want to stop and have some
reflection, because it may indicate that things,
quote, unquote, under the hood are struggling a
little bit, that there may be some problems there.
Yeah. So I think an example of that might be isolation.
I think that we find as we experience storms within,
we tend to close ourselves off
from people around us.
We do that for a lot of social reasons.
We know intuitively that if you’re
angry, if you’re upset, if you’re not right,
and you go into the middle of a room,
you’re a little worried about what am I going to say?
How am I going to treat the other person?
So there’s actually an instinctive positive, I think, that we are trying to achieve when we find ourselves isolating
from others in moments of difficulty.
The problem is that actually doesn’t often help us.
We actually become isolated in very unhelpful ways where we begin to sort of get trapped in mind ruts.
And especially if you’re a worrier,
you begin thinking and processing things from 1000 different angles.
And none of those angles are helping you deal with the thing itself.
It just becomes sort of a
constant, repetitive self-medication.
And I think that one way that we might find ourselves in a
state of increased anxiety is if we can see ourselves spending less time reaching out,
having less interest in talking to our kids or grandkids or friends,
whatever that might be.
Once we find ourselves closed off from people,
not just socially distant, but relationally emotionally,
psychologically,
and even spiritually distant from other people,
that’s, I think, a sign that we should do some self-reflection.
I think any moments that we begin to retreat from primary relationships,
if it gets harder to
make the phone call,
if it gets harder to respond to the email,
if we find ourselves
just less engaged and maybe caring less about maintaining those connections are moments that
we need to be aware that something’s happening.
And this is a struggle for people everywhere.
But I think that I believe this.
I have found this to be especially difficult in the Midwest,
where we all grow up with this expectation and we have this kind of communal narrative
that Midwesterners handle their own stuff,
that when it gets tough,
we just dig in,
we grab our bootstraps,
we take care of it alone,
and that we don’t ever ask for help.
And what that does is it creates the very mechanism by which withdrawal happens.
Instead of saying,
“Hey, I’m struggling a little bit,” we say, “Well,
I’ll get back to them.” I’ve literally had people tell me,
“I have a lot of things going on in my life.
I’ve got a lot of struggles happening right now.
I’ll be back to church when I get it figured out,” which is just unfortunately
kind of getting things backwards.
Our relationships are wonderful at bearing the weight of some of our
stuff if we’ll let them.
And we see it in something as simple as when someone’s been sick,
allowing the church to bring food to them.
That innate kind of,
“No, I don’t need help.
I don’t need help.
I don’t need help.” And that creates a discord because internally there’s some part of us that knows,
“Wait, I could probably use a hand.” And getting ourselves to the point where we
acknowledge that can be a real struggle.
Another area that I think is very true in my own experience for myself,
and I only offer it to those that maybe some might find it helpful,
is I do think
for me when I experience difficulty naming gratitude in my life,
it’s often related to anxiety
that’s grown.
And let me explain what I mean by that.
I was just talking with a friend and we were
talking about some things that were happening.
There was a lot of darkness,
a lot of difficulty
as there are in the moment in which we live,
but they also had some real good.
And I just said,
“Man, I’m really excited and I celebrate this and I’m grateful that God’s been faithful in this.”
And he could not hear it.
He could not recognize it.
He could not see the good.
He could only see
the 14,000 negative things that could possibly come out of it.
And that is a sign when we can’t
see God working and we can’t express gratitude in it.
I think that is often a sign that we become
fixated on the negative.
Our imaginations and our perspective is finely tuned in that moment
to what could go wrong here.
And goodness,
I mean, I look even at a kid who is in middle school or
high school in Spirit Lake here and the idea,
“Do I get to play the next ball game?
Are they going to take away this thing?” We’ve lived in a moment in which it can be hard to be grateful because it
feels like things are changing and changing gears is difficult.
And you could naturally begin to get
this sort of negative perspective about what’s going to happen.
But I do think that as people
of faith, if we find ourselves not being able to see the good,
because God works even in very
difficult circumstances, if we cannot find words of gratitude,
if we can’t imagine God doing good
things in difficult places,
that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I mean, there are times of grief and sadness,
but I would in those moments pause and do some reflection and see if my motivation is
not more deeply driven by worry and fear than I’ve given credit to,
because often that becomes the
sort of generator of the inability to practice gratefulness.
Yeah, for certain, when we struggle to name positives, when we struggle to identify things that we would normally speak of as blessings,
then again, this is a moment for pause and a moment for considering,
“Am I out of sorts internally?
Do I feel any peace?” And if that answer is no,
then that’s a good indicator that it’s time to
work on some of those things.
You used the word,
Michael.
I think another one would be sadness,
the idea that if I’m facing melancholy,
there was this great word in the ancient church called
“Acedia.” The monks called it the noontime demon.
And “Acedia” is a sense that nothing matters.
It’s a kind of dullness.
It’s a kind of lethargy of,
not just of laziness, but of spirit,
of being
just kind of worn out and weary.
And if we’re feeling a great deal of blue,
of what we might
call sadness, or even flatness is a word that is in some ways scarier,
because feeling nothing is
almost worse than feeling sad.
But if we’re spending…
And again,
all of us have some of
that in our life,
the ups and downs of our journey,
we’re going to get there at some point.
But if we feel like we’ve set up camp there,
and we are living there,
then this becomes a moment that we
have to begin to try and plan what a journey out of that would look like.
And we’ll talk about some
things that may be a part of that journey.
Depending on the severity of those things,
there may be other steps that need to be taken as well.
But we can’t…
I think we have to be
very cautious about just hanging out there.
That’s not a sustainable kind of place.
We need to spend the time there that life may demand.
But if we feel like we’re just there,
or if we can’t
attribute why we’re there,
if we can’t point to something and say,
“Well, yeah, I lost a family
member,” or “Some things didn’t go well,” and yeah,
that’s going to create a season of grief and reflection for me.
If we’re looking, saying, “I’m here, but I don’t know why I’m here,” I think
that’s another indicator that we may need to get the map out and say,
“What does it look like to
leave this place behind for a while?” And I apologize that this sounds too elementary or too basic,
but just knowing the Enneagram a little bit and knowing myself,
part of that, Clint, is just literally physically knowing how you’re doing.
If you come home from work and you are
wasted every day in a way that you know is not normal,
if you’re just exhausted and fatigued all the time,
that has meaning and significance.
Some of us ignore our body.
I think some of us just
ignore the signs that something’s not right.
Now,
we know, and if we had a doctor in this conversation,
they’d say there could be physical,
medical things happening there.
And that matters.
That matters not only because we’re humans who are embodied.
It matters to God who’s the creator
and who desires for us to live in wholeness.
But there’s also a spiritual sense in which,
when we live on the edge,
we find ourselves in that noontime sort of sickness, that flatlining
of the soul.
There’s this Groundhog Day kind of thing that begins to happen,
not just spiritually, but actually physically.
We begin to find ourselves believing that we don’t have agency,
that we don’t make a difference,
and we lose energy,
we lose appetite,
we lose the desire
to move ourselves and to care for ourselves.
And the advanced forms of that need help.
When we really get far down that road,
that’s the time when it’s time to have conversations with a counselor
or a psychologist because there are times in which we need to jolt the system and get things working again.
But I do think sometimes we miss the spiritual opportunities in recognizing these
signs our bodies give us,
and we just sort of keep pushing through and say,
“No, you got to keep
going.” But those can be markers of times in which we’ve really begun to embody,
really take into our bodies some of the anxieties and fears that surround us.
There certainly is an overlap between
what we would call mental health and spiritual health.
And some of those markers are helpful in both conversations,
changes of appetite,
abrupt changes of routine,
of orientation,
of mood,
of just general day-to-day existence.
If those things have shifted relatively quickly,
those are moments where I think it’s the right time to ask those questions.
If we find ourselves
not able to sleep,
not able to get up,
not able to eat,
eating too much.
I mean, again,
some of that is just how we process stress,
but that’s not unconnected to our experience of anxiety, anxiousness, or peacefulness.
And so I think one of the blessings in that,
Michael, is that the world of psychology and scientific insight can be pretty helpful in terms of helping us navigate
spiritual realities as well.
And it works in reverse.
They inform one another,
and I think that that’s helpful in the long run.
I think my last thing to contribute in the diagnosis part
of the conversation, Clint, is simply to say that sometimes when we have really taken the anxiety
and the worry inside ourselves,
and when it has really taken root in us,
we can find ourselves
externalizing that in anger and in frustration that we direct to other people.
I know some people
experience that more acutely across the board.
Some people are just,
they’re quicker to anger than other people.
So depending upon where you sit on that scale,
I think you need to be reflective.
But when you find yourself yelling at your kids,
when you find yourself cutting at your spouse,
when you find yourself in a public space saying things to people,
and then you hear it as you
say it and you think, “Ooh,
that sounds hurt.
That doesn’t sound like me.” That is a moment in which
I think we would do very well to pause and to begin reflecting because hurt people tend to hurt
people.
There’s a reality in which we work out of our own sinfulness.
If you’ve been following in
the Romans Bible study,
the reality of our own brokenness tends to externalize in the world that
surrounds us.
And worry,
fear,
anxiety,
these things tend to bind us up.
They tend to really get us
focused on the negative.
And as that happens,
we tend to not only feel like we’re losing agency in
our lives, we tend to become far shorter with the people that surround us.
And so if there’s this
sort of rapid change and you find yourself in places of anger more quickly and more usually than normal,
I think I would call that a moment of reflection and an opportunity to check up on how you’re doing.
Partly through personality, partly through life experience,
partly through individual expression.
I think we all pave some avenues of where stress,
where anxiety takes us.
Some of us will explode, lash out.
Some of us will go inward.
Some of us will escape into behaviors,
food, alcohol, whatever it may be.
And whatever that is,
they sort of exist from the same trigger.
And having said that though,
Michael, I think there’s wisdom in your insight because
almost never is anger the extension of peacefulness.
Almost never.
And I’m very close to
saying never, but I’m going to leave a tiny window.
But anger almost never flashes of anger
or just not a sign, typically,
that things are going well internally.
There is almost always
a moment in which I’ve lost my balance.
I have tipped the scale in the side of
this disquiet or lack of peace.
Because I’ve paved that road or because that’s my personal path,
it spills out in that direction.
But it almost never indicates.
If you’re spending a lot of time mad,
you’re just not a peaceful person at that moment.
That’s almost
unarguable, inarguable.
So as I sit here at the table,
as we’re reflecting on this together,
I’ve got to imagine that we have a wide variety of responses to the conversation
thus far.
There are some who are going to just naturally be more attuned to the conversation
of how are you.
Some people are more introspective,
they are more drawn to journaling and to asking
how I am.
In fact, sometimes we take that too far.
There are others who may feel pretty beaten up by
this point in the conversation.
If that’s not a thing that you do a lot and you think, “Oh man,
yeah, that’s part of my experience,
but I kind of work hard to not think about that stuff,”
this may have felt brutal a little bit up to this point.
And the reality is,
and this is the
challenging reality for everyone on that spectrum,
is that ultimately the only way forward,
the only way in which we can really embody and practice peace as we are called to in Scripture
and to live into the spirit of peace,
who we are promised to be a part of the believer’s life,
is to recognize that that path does wind through woundedness.
We can’t circle around it.
We can’t pretend that the tough stuff of life can be avoided.
Now you can put it in the closet,
you can lock the door,
you can even put a chain around that lock,
but ultimately that is always
going to drive you if you are unwilling to engage it.
Now that’s easier said than done,
and I don’t want to pretend like this is an easy process or a process that can be undertaken in
one day, Clint.
It cannot be,
but I do think there’s a sense in which regardless of whether you find
this kind of introspective diagnosis,
this personal checkup comfortable or not,
we all have some responsibility as people of faith to begin to at least humbly ask,
“How am I really,
and where do I need God’s grace to help me meet the gap where I know that if I’m honest,
I’m not always at rest?” I think if you could somehow think of
our internal piece as a map or a property,
I think sometimes we’re tempted to live in one small part
of it where there isn’t anything scary or frustrating,
and to sort of wall off the parts
of it where we’re kind of inherently afraid to go,
or maybe where there are things that we don’t want to face.
And most of us in our life function out of some woundedness,
that we carry some
internal scars, often from childhood, not exclusively,
but to the extent that we won’t
face them, that we won’t acknowledge them,
that we won’t try to unpack and deal with whatever has
caused those wounds in us,
then what we’re doing is we’re sectioning off our life.
And we call that
piece because maybe the part that we’ve claimed doesn’t have conflict in it,
doesn’t have fear, and it doesn’t have anxiety in it,
but what it means is that we’re forfeiting the bigger picture.
We’re sacrificing some part of ourself that we’re afraid to deal with,
that we’re afraid to face.
And you know, biblically speaking,
that’s not really what we mean by peace,
and biblical peace, unfortunately,
tends to run directly through our woundedness.
And you know, this is, Michael, where we have to have a moment where we put an asterisk on the conversation and say
that, you know,
for many of us,
those wounds are manageable.
Those wounds are things we could talk about.
We’ve probably encountered them.
We probably know what they are.
But for some,
they are huge.
They are terrifying.
And for those people,
and for all of us in some moments,
we may face something that when we talk about journaling or prayer or reading,
that’s not probably going to be a big enough toolbox.
And a person is going to need to have
some conversation with someone who is professionally trained to help people do those tasks and to get
at those realities and unchain themselves from them so that they can experience peace.
And you know, the tricky part is you may not know what that is.
But I think we have to be careful,
because when we talk peace,
if we only mean up here on the surface,
it probably doesn’t sound terrifying.
But if we mean that we have to dive down into our stuff and seek it underneath all of our woundedness,
then peace becomes, in many ways, a terrifying kind of conversation.
And not all of
our life situations are going to allow us to do that on our own.
We may need help.
Yeah, and I don’t want to backtrack too much here,
Clint.
But this text has been on my mind as we
engaged it in worship on Sunday.
But a thing that struck me in Mark chapter 1,
21 through 28, was the fact that when Jesus casts out the first demon in Mark,
the demon-possessed man is in church.
And I think it’s interesting,
because ultimately,
the message that Mark is painting from the very
beginning is that Jesus has authority,
even authority over those things that have bondage,
that take us into bondage.
But isn’t it interesting that this man is in church?
There’s a lot of
demoniacs throughout the scripture who are out of town.
They’re outcasts.
They can’t even really
fit into the society.
They are so beyond their own control.
But here’s a person trying to make it.
On some level, this person’s in church, and people know,
yeah, he has struggles, but he’s in church, right?
And yet,
it is in that moment when Jesus does for this man what he couldn’t do for himself.
And there are places in our souls,
friends, where going there does not mean that you conquer it.
It doesn’t mean that you need to have the strength and wherewithal to somehow contain it.
That’s how we imagine peace sometimes,
that we need to be strong enough to face it.
What we find in the darkest places,
and sometimes I think there’s great wisdom in your comment,
Clint, we need to bring people with us on that journey.
But what we find when we get to the darkest places is that
Jesus the Christ who has power is already there.
That peace is a gift.
It’s not a thing that we
create within ourselves.
And that maybe is the danger of the part two of this conversation today,
is the reality that we may have practices that we as Christians can bring to bear in our spiritual disciplines.
We can grow in peace,
but we don’t affect peace.
We don’t initiate and substantiate
peace.
That is done by Jesus Christ,
the one who stands in the room and calls those places of
bondage and breaks them by his own creative power.
And so we then in faith can lean into these
different areas of life and we can begin to seek to grow in our own practices of peace.
And I think that’s helpful that we can be reminded that we can have agency and there are things we can do,
even in a season which is troubled and tumultuous,
that we can sort of lean into that gift that we received.
I want to be careful modernizing a text,
but in the gospel,
no one slays their own demons.
Jesus releases them.
And when he does, there’s often shrieking,
convulsing.
That is a difficult
kind of process.
Being set free is its own kind of painful experience.
And yet the promise is,
on the other side of that,
is where life is.
That’s where freedom is.
That’s where a new
lease on one’s soul is.
And yes, that is not something easily undertaken and maybe not
something that should be undertaken alone.
I’m thinking of your comment,
Michael, in dark places.
When you’re a kid,
what do you do?
You go get someone to go with you,
especially if you have siblings,
like, “Oh, hey, come with me.” And it is a place for a guide.
We are never the shining night with sword drawn facing our own stuff.
We are the person with a flashlight trying
to get a good look at it so we can take another step into what we once thought was a scary space.
And those steps are not easy.
And as we move into this conversation,
you know, this part of the
conversation, we talk about what some of those tools that we bring with us,
what are some of those steps?
As we’ve tried to identify what is a moment,
what does a moment look like in which
peace is not very present?
Now, what does it look like to try and address that?
If we identify this
time in ourselves where I’m not feeling at peace,
how might I evaluate whether I have done some of
the things and need to do some of the things that might point me back in that direction?
Yeah, so I don’t want to be too concrete or too practical,
but we do have a few things to
suggest checking up on.
And one of those might be the spaces of your life.
And let me sort of tease
out what I mean by that.
It is striking,
Clint, when I reflect on many of our beloved first
prez family who have not been back in our sanctuary for now going getting close to an entire year.
Some folks have not been in that space.
And we’ve said maybe 10,
20, 30 times now, right?
That it’s not the space that makes worship.
It’s not the space that is holy.
It’s the God who meets us there.
But what we don’t mean by that is that a sanctuary,
a place of refuge,
is not spiritually meaningful.
It absolutely is.
And for so many people,
that is a space that we come weekly in
which we find a moment of intentional respite and intentional quiet.
And so for many,
I wonder if this might be a good time to reflect,
especially if you’ve not been able to be back in our sanctuary
in our worshiping space,
I might ask you,
where do you find space where you can find sanctuary,
where you can find spiritual respite?
Some of us are very much locked in our homes.
And that requires a kind of intentionality of where is the chair?
Where’s the corner?
Maybe where’s the room?
But where’s the space that I’ve set aside as peaceful space?
That’s space where I don’t let
in the radio and the TV and the noise.
It’s space where I am intentional in teaching myself that when I’m here,
I’m mindful of God and God’s presence in my life.
And don’t underestimate that small thing.
Having a place where you go,
where you find an opportunity to sort of be called
above the hum and noise of everyday life is a significant part of the spiritual practice.
And if we don’t have that,
if we don’t have a place and space for that,
I would advise that
we give some thought to that.
Throughout the scripture,
primarily the Old Testament,
but true in the New Testament as well,
the idea of space being sacred,
whether that be the land
of Israel, whether that be the temple,
the holy of holies,
the idea that there are sacred
spots in our life that we resonate with is well attested throughout our Christian history.
And not only that, Michael, not to make this secular,
but the sanctuary is just one space among many
that people have lost.
So maybe that’s as simple as changing your tablecloth and lighting some
candles for dinner until you can go back to your favorite restaurant.
But I do think that if we can
be intentional about trying to carve out a space that helps us feel at ease.
If it’s something, maybe it’s where you read scripture or do your devotions.
Maybe you can section off part of a room.
If your house enables you to do that,
if your space allows for that,
that could be a very
helpful practice that may transmit a sense of stability in a time that you feel like you’ve
lost some of it.
And I think one of the things that that space enables is a deeper level of
self-reflection and theological insight.
And let me sort of tease out what I mean by that.
There’s a sense in which when we engage in media and in reading and you can get to the end of the
article or you can get to the end of the news segment in 30 minutes, whatever,
that time spent thinking is often not very deep thinking.
There’s often some entertainment in it.
There’s often,
you know, when you’re scrolling Facebook,
there’s a couple little aha,
that’s interesting sorts of
things, but often you don’t plumb the depths.
And if we’re going to take seriously this idea,
that the only way to see and receive and practice peace is to lean into some of those places of
disharmony within ourselves,
we actually need to be intentional about reflecting and interacting
with things that help us get there.
I don’t want to beat a drum or beat a dead horse in this,
but we do need to remember,
we need to really return to that practice of being careful about what we let in.
Because when we turn to a one particular news source all day,
that has a way of shaping our imagination.
Or when we scroll through some social media feed all day,
that has a way of
shaping our view of the world.
And it is absolutely essential that we engage with things that have
depth, that have wisdom, that have insight.
And I think that we often sort of find ourselves
gravitating towards some of these easier to access places that don’t help us engage deeply.
And that sort of sneaks up on us,
but has a very powerful long term effect in our imaginations and our
ability to practice some of these spiritual disciplines.
I think we see the cumulative effects
of what happens when people digest a steady diet of negativity over this past year,
whether that be Facebook,
whether that be news in general,
and I don’t care if you’re an MSN person,
a CNN person, a Fox News person, or whatever.
News tends to sensationalize negativity.
There’s no news channel out there that’s going to be,
“Hey, here’s 60 minutes of great news that you’re glad to hear.”
News exists to sort of identify from whatever perspective it’s given a troubling story,
a negative impact.
I mean, news is always showing us some of that.
And if we in this
moment of this extra time are getting larger doses of that,
I mean, what happens when we
eat more food?
We become unhealthy.
What happens when we consume more negativity?
We become
unhealthy.
So I think we have to be very cautious.
Turn the TV off for part of the day.
Read a book.
Maybe it’s a book you’ve read 10 times.
Get some space away from the noise.
I’m not saying be uninformed.
I actually think Christians are to be very informed
about the world we live in.
But give it a rest.
Take a step back.
Go for a walk.
Do something else with that time than looking at people’s angry posts on social media or listening to
another version of why this thing isn’t good or why that person isn’t good.
That stuff is poison.
And we can all ingest a little bit of it and be fine.
Our spirits can process that remarkably well.
But when you are just at the trough day after day,
it is going to drag you down and it is not going to be helpful.
You know, Clint, I think it’s interesting how easy it is for us to begin to rely
upon something that helps us navigate the world.
We just get used to a thing and it becomes part of our routine.
And the only way to truly become aware of that is to practice Sabbath.
And let me tell you what I mean.
There is built into the way that God ordered the universe, this divine directive,
to step away, step away from the work,
step away from that sense of need
that you need to do this thing or that people need this from you.
Sabbath is an intentional
separation from the normal routine of life so that we can recognize our place as God’s beloved
and also so that we can live in gratitude for the gifts that God has given us.
And the only way that we see the habits and the practices and the good and also those temptations,
the not good that we are consuming,
is to for a moment step away.
So you say turn off the TV.
Yes, for some of us, maybe give a try for a month without cable.
I mean, the world will keep turning.
That would be okay.
If that’s what you need to do,
take a Sabbath from that.
Take a Sabbath from Facebook, good grief.
Archive it for a month.
You’ll be fine.
Delete it off your phone.
You don’t need it to exist, right?
Maybe if you find yourself just fixated on one particular thing and you find it
sort of beginning to wreak havoc in your soul,
you’re worried about that thing all the time.
See what it would look like for a week to intentionally step away from information from it.
Stop throwing logs on that fire and see what happens.
Oftentimes when we create
intentional moments in our life of separation from these things,
we find that God is in charge,
that Jesus is Lord,
and that the thing that we were sort of feeding was a thing that we were
feeding and not a thing that needs to be that way.
There’s a sense of agency and freedom that comes in it.
Though, and you said this earlier, Clint,
I’ll be brief with this,
but in C.S.
Lewis’s Great Divorce, there’s a man who has a demon and the angel comes and says,
“I want to free you
person from this demon.” And the person felt great pain to let it go because this demon had been a
friend and been a guide and been with him throughout their entire life.
And only in a short moment of
decisiveness, a person said yes,
and then they were suddenly freed.
I think that is the burden
that many of us bear.
We bore these sort of worries and anxieties and things that have
fed those worries and anxieties and to let them go would be unbelievably terrifying.
But we in small steps trust God and we continue to lean on that promise that God is a live network in us.
And He is always asking,
“Hand me the worry.
Hand me that fear.
Hand me that thing that’s
feeding the fear.” And if we’re willing in a moment of faith to give that up,
we might be absolutely astounded to see what God is capable of doing with it.
We’re coming into the season of Lent,
season in the historic church when we often talk about
giving things up, which is not unhelpful language.
There are things that we all need to release from our lives.
But I wonder sometimes if we’re better served with the idea of replacing
rather than giving up.
So what does it look like to say in a moment of anxiety,
“I don’t need to
be on the computer.
I was going to,
you know, Facebook for 10 minutes.
I’m going to get the Bible out.
I’m going to read 10 minutes of a gospel.
I’m going to replace some of what creates
anxiety.
If I’m always keyed up after watching the news,
then I’m going to take a day,
a week,
a month, however long I can do that.
And I’m going, you know what?
I’m not going to watch
that program.
That program gets me fired up.
I’m going to do this instead.
I’m going to go for a
walk.
I’m going to listen to music.
I’m going to do nothing.
I’m going to pray.
I’m going to sit,
reflect that if we can replace some of what creates unrest in us with things that help us access peace,
we’re going to be in small steps better and better and better for it.
And I think that’s a good challenge for all of us to take an inventory of,
okay, what bank account do the
things in my life make deposits into?
Are they depositing into the account of peace in my spirit or of unrest,
of anxiety?
And then to try and channel those things and say,
I want to put
less into anxiety and more into peace.
And that’s, you know,
simple to say and hard to do,
but it’s a good step forward.
There’s a sense also in which practicing peace looks like
externalizing peace.
Now, it’s not chiefly externalizing.
I don’t think you start there,
but as we’re seeking to have practices that lead us into greater sense of peace and participation in God’s peace,
I would invite you to consider how can you create some peace in the world that
surrounds you?
This is a counterintuitive lesson.
I’ve actually learned it most from my spouse,
who’s really good at this.
She recognizes that when she can do good in another person’s life,
when she can donate to the food bank,
when she can see a person who’s in a really tough spot,
and she can come in and she can be a friend,
a partner, a guide, when she can create a little
peace in somebody else’s life,
not the peace, but she can contribute a part that has a significant
way of bringing peace back into our own soul.
There’s a way in which when we share the love
of God with other,
that’s not a zero sum game.
It doesn’t depart from us and go to them.
God is able to work in this mysterious way to create more peace in both lives so that we experience
peace as we seek to bring peace to others.
So if there’s a place in the world,
maybe that’s a country,
maybe that’s an issue,
maybe you do find yourself sort of keyed up after the news.
Instead of getting all worried about what’s happening in the world,
maybe you could do some research and
find concrete ways that you can contribute to be peace bringers to the world.
And you may be shocked
to find out just small amounts of effort towards externalizing peace can have a significant way
of helping us receive and internalize that very peace that we’re seeking to give.
It’s very difficult to be fixated on yourself in the process of helping someone else.
It is a matter of moving the focus.
Instead of looking internal at my worries and my frustrations and my fears,
I move my focus outward towards someone else.
And in the midst of that,
we are both blessed.
The receiver and the giver are both granted some measure of relief,
some measure of blessing.
And that’s a great idea, Michael.
Take the 15 minutes that you would have watched the program,
get on Hy-Vee’s website and send food to the food pantry or Walmart or Fairway,
whoever you shop with.
And the same could be said,
get online and support an organization.
If you’re out and about,
drop something off for a community organization.
There are many ways we can do that.
And when we
contribute to someone else,
we often find it as an antidote to some of the worries,
some of the anxiety in our own life.
And I think that’s a great idea.
There are also classics.
Obviously,
scripture, reading scripture is helpful.
In times of anxiety,
I think the Psalms
are treasured by many people and always have been.
Music,
you know, one of the great things about the
age we live in is that you have at your fingertips and your phone or your computer,
basically any music that you’d like to listen to,
something that gives you comfort,
something that gives you peace,
hymns,
classical music, whatever that might be.
And then, of course, prayer.
Moving into a season and learning to deepen our prayer life,
that doesn’t have to be,
you don’t have to sit and pray for an hour,
but maybe giving yourself
five minutes of absolute stillness and peace to begin with.
And you will find yourself
better able to move in that direction as you practice it,
which is a skill that needs to be rehearsed.
And so,
the Christian language,
the Christian history is full of practices,
I think, that contribute to peace making and peace within oneself as well.
You know,
we had some conversation about whether this was the right mini-series to do.
And one of the factors in that was because just this fall,
we did a whole series on spiritual practices.
And I would insert that whole series as an asterisk here,
as a footnote, and say, if you would like to think
about some actual physical things that you could do to practice this spiritual discipline,
go back and listen to those if you didn’t,
or listen to them again if there’s a particular topic that
you think resonates with you.
Those would all apply here.
And all of the other spiritual disciplines,
you know, gratitude and forgiveness and love and grace,
you know, these are things that we all could
also be practicing right now.
But we came down to talk about peace in particular,
really less by way
of teaching something about peace.
We all somewhat intuitively know that command that was given, fear not.
The struggle is, I think, that we live in a moment in which it could be tempting for us
to live lives filled with worry and anxieties and fears,
and to keep pushing them down and
pushing them away because we feel like we’re waiting for some emancipation day,
whether that be a day in which vaccines happen or a day in which some proclamation gets made and restrictions go away.
Maybe the day in which church looks and feels exactly the way it did before.
I think we’ve all created an image of that day ahead when all things will be bright and beautiful.
And I don’t want to be dour,
but that is not a good thing to wait for.
I mean, it’s a good thing to celebrate
if that moment does materialize as we hope for it to.
But friends,
peace is a thing that can live in
us far before our circumstances being the way that we wish that they would.
And the more and more
that we sort of push things to the side and say,
I’m just going to push through until that day and that day.
And we experienced that day maybe getting pushed back or being different than we expected.
We may find at the end of hoarding all of the worry,
all of the anxiety that it was for not,
that it didn’t help us.
And in fact, it just made it more difficult as people of faith along
the way.
So may this be an opportunity for you to step back and to do a checkup?
How am I doing?
And and have I begun to sort of store how some of this worry and fear and anxiety?
And if I have,
instead of waiting for it to magically go away,
which it probably won’t,
maybe I could begin to work at it in faith that God will actually be there to help me
receive and experience peace,
even in the times in which we now live.
And maybe not to go back to practical,
maybe to end with, you know,
also remember that there is
an interesting connection between our physical life and our spiritual life.
And so there is
an entire realm of physicality that contributes to peace.
And maybe that’s taking a walk.
Maybe that’s eating food that is better for you than what we’ve been eating.
But there are these connections.
Maybe that’s going for a drive.
And we’re fortunate in the area that we live
that you don’t have to go far to find some beauty,
to find something to be kind of impressed by.
And, you know,
don’t just drive to the north end of Big Spirit,
drive up there,
turn your car off,
maybe roll the window down a little bit,
listen to the wind,
feel some of the cold,
watch some of the wildlife.
As we do that,
I think the blessing that we find in that
is a sort of remembrance that we’re part of something bigger.
There was a seminary professor
who used to say,
“God doesn’t need you,
but God loves you.” And I think the freedom of realizing
that we’re connected to this larger thing.
You know,
the deer don’t care about coronavirus.
The trees don’t care.
There is this sense in which we’re part of something bigger.
And as we remember that,
we also remember that the one who created it knows us by name
and walks our journey with us.
And ultimately, that’s where peace is found.
These tools are wonderful.
They’re helpful.
They’re practical.
There are things we can literally do to increase
the level of peacefulness in each of our souls.
But ultimately, all of those things point us back
to the foundation of peace,
which is that the God of the universe and the mercy of Jesus Christ
has claimed us each and called us by name and said to us on multiple occasions,
“Do not be afraid.
Do not fear.
I am with you,
and I leave for you peace.” A peace that passes understanding.
And ultimately,
peace is not something we have to create for ourselves.
These tools don’t make
peace in us.
They help us put ourselves in a position to access it, to accept it.
And that’s an important reminder that I think we can get sometimes by leaving our routine behind a little bit.
You know, friends, well, we did not intend to make a primer on peace.
There’s a lot more that
could be said, but I hope that maybe there’s something in this that challenges you and
something that inspires you to receive and accept and to live in the peace that God desires to work within you.
Thanks for joining us for this conversation.
We look forward to kicking off a new series,
which we’re excited about that will travel throughout Lent and be connected to some
other of the other worshiping parts of our congregation.
So we look forward to seeing
you next week.
But if you have thoughts,
if you have questions,
if you think there’s a part of
peace or if this has raised within you questions that you feel like you need to have a conversation
with another person about,
Clint and myself are always here to talk,
give us a call at the church,
send us a message through the website.
All of that material is linked in the description.
We want to be those people who walk beside you as you seek to live in to God’s best for you.
And we’re grateful that you joined us for the conversation.
Yeah, thanks for listening.
And if you have questions,
comments, if this evokes some things
in you that you want to pursue and you feel like maybe we could help point some directions,
by all means, reach out to us.
We welcome those conversations.
Thanks for being with us, everyone.