This Thing Called Peace.

Image © by Brian E. Faulkner

Image © by Brian E. Faulkner

My neighborhood was all a-glitter this Christmas, or part of it was anyway.  One heavily secular display was besotted with clever animated lights that stretched through half a cul-de-sac, spilled around the house (where a fire-breathing dragon held sway) and then strewed lit-up holiday cheer across the backyard, which barely could be seen from the street.  This was in contrast to another neighbor who had set out two six-foot lighted palm trees with a polar bear between them, either in a bid to be the Christmas decor outlier or to make a social statement (either way, my young grandchildren loved the incongruity of it).  Further afield, a large county-owned park went all out with a massive technological light display that included fishing penguins and a full-size, bulb-encrusted steam locomotive among other seasonal extravaganzas.  It took the best part of an hour to creep as far as the ticket booth (with these same increasingly tired and impatient grandchildren in the back), where we and a gazillion others trapped in the traffic then paid for the privilege of winding our way past example after example of illuminated Christmas pictographs that must have taken six months to set up.  As we finally exited the park in a tea-steeped rush to the nearest Starbucks’ restroom, I was reminded of what a friend had to say about his Alaskan cruise experience a few years back.  “It was my first cruise!  And my last.”  

There was, however, another Christmas display in our town that either was new this year or never got on my yuletide radar.  It was a bit off the beaten path, which made it fun to find and that much more enjoyable when you got there.  If anyone had told me I’d look forward with the enthusiasm of a ten-year-old to repeated viewings of a small frame house with 40-thousand Christmas lights hung on and around it, I’d have wondered what she'd put in her hot chocolate.

​The still picture I submit herewith hardly does this display justice.  The lights changed colors (how this is accomplished I do not know except it probably had something to do with computers).  They pulsed to carols playing on your car radio.  A waterfall of lights cascaded down the front porch steps.  An elegant silver star shone high above the house.  “Peace on Earth” declared itself in a simple script out front.   The overall effect was enchanting (Clark Griswold would be red, blue and green with envy).

As the savings-saturated week after Christmas roars toward New Years Day, it is a blessing to have some quiet time to reflect on the meaning of peace: not the mock peace that shows up only when life’s concerns aren’t chewing at your mind, but the peace that passes all understanding.  It’s a peace that endures, that enlivens your being and gives you hope in spite of the world’s attempt to crush the spirit out of you.  It is Christ’s perfect peace, the one alluded to by Luke when he talks about “peace, goodwill toward men.” 

Some years ago during a particularly intractable time in my life, I was on the near edge of awakening one morning when a clear inner voice assured me that the storm clouds swirling through my life would pass.  Then, almost as an afterthought, the voice said “Isaiah 26”.  I was not familiar with this verse so looked it up:

Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in thee.   (Is. 26: 3)

During the more than 20 years since my early morning message, the Lord has seen fit to see me through more than a trial or two and on occasion has chosen to take me to the end of my road – or so it appeared at the time.  Yet, I have never since been without his perfect peace.  Despite whatever fix I find myself in, I have a deep well of peace to call on.   My only task is not to mess things up by trying to push through the problems on my own, an all too inviting (and all-too-human) choice in a charge-ahead, get-it-done-now world.   In a sense, I have become fearless – not recklessly so but mercifully so.  Because, like the star lingering over the Christmas house, I know there will be Light to guide the way.

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