All we are saying is give peace a chance

According to my calendar today is the International Day of Peace. I am quite drawn to the concept of peace and to what it really means. I am sure most people conjure up images of hippies, protesters or John & Yoko in bed. However, I have come to be familiar with what shouldn't be but is, quite a new concept to me. That is the idea of peace as one of the fruits of the spirit, or as one may commonly know it, inner peace.

"When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." Galatians 5:22-23

or as The Message translation puts it:

"But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard - things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely." Galatians 5:22-23

My reading of this or what I am able to draw from this is that peace must be something that is developed within us. Peace is not something that one can demand from his or her external circumstance. To do some more borrowing I will use a quote from Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life:


"God develops real peace within us, not by making things go the way we planned, but by allowing times of chaos and confusion. Anyone can be peaceful watching a beautiful sunset or relaxing on vacation. We learn real peace by choosing to trust God in circumstances in which we are tempted to worry or be afraid" (pg. 202).

To divulge some personal information without getting into the nitty-gritty of it, the external circumstances of my life in the past year have really been anything but peaceful. My dear old dad always told me that while I cannot control what happens to me I can control my reaction. Now that I feel at a much more peaceful place, I look back and the real unfortunate part of my not-so-peaceful circumstances is that I kept trying to control people and things in order to make my insides feel better. Guess what? It didn't work. In fact, it produced a great deal of anxiety and worry in me that was completely needless. The more I tried to control things and push them in the direction I wanted, the further away things went. That produced more anxiety within me and the further away from peace I flew.

Finally, things ended up hitting a bottom I was pretty much afraid of hitting all along. The only thing left for me to do was to restore my inner peace. I cannot even begin to describe how emotionally draining it is to continue on a quest where you are trying to control the people and circumstances around you. All I can say is that it will never bring permanent positive results and it will never make you happy.

So, in the spirit of International Day of Peace try to remember the power in having inner peace. No one can take that from you. It may seem easier said than done, but trust me, as someone who will openly and freely admit that I have some pretty major control issues, It can be done! Maybe if we concentrated on restoring our inner peace we would be capable of restoring peace in our beautiful but very broken world.

To remind myself of the value of maintaining my inner peace, I have this dovely little friend:

It wouldn't be right if I didn't leave you with a song,

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

*ish