What Peace?

Tuesday, Fifth Week of Easter

“Peace I leave you; my peace I give you.”
—John 14:27

Some days I just don’t feel it. Maybe I’m going through a dry spell. Maybe it’s acedia, that delightfully old concept of listlessness and spiritual sloth. But maybe not. I’m still praying; I just don’t feel much right now. Maybe it’s the mental and physical exhaustion of being a new parent and facing a new job transition.

At any rate, my tendency is to view this condition as a problem, and specifically as a failure. I am slowly learning, however, that this not the case. Consolations come and go, for reasons beyond our capacity for understanding. Feelings, motivations, desires and fears are conditioned by that mysterious combination of nature and life-long patterns of mind. They are transient. They are impermanent. They are not the essence of my true self.

The peace Christ promises, at least in this life, is not the peace of perpetual consolation and ease. It is the promise that, regardless what I’m feeling at the moment, I am loved, redeemed, and restored in the ultimate sense. Joy will return, and then recede again. Life’s pace will change, and so will my affect. But at the level of my truest self, all is one, and all is well.

Lord of Peace, I honestly wouldn’t mind some consolation right now. Open my eyes and heart to experience joy where you are trying to reveal it to me. But above all, let me rest in the peace of knowing you, even when I don’t feel it. Amen.