Peace and Chaos

I doubt it will surprise anyone to hear that I have been thinking a lot about what it is to find peace in the midst of chaos these days.  I find myself longing for quiet, for reassurance, for calm and some semblance of knowing.  And as each day passes, each week, each month and that definition of peace remains out of my reach, I find myself circling back again and again to what is peace, what does peace feel like when my world is chaotic and uncertain, where is God in the midst of the storm?

My family and I have found ourselves at Cleary Lake Regional Park many Saturdays this summer, kayaking and paddle boarding over those still waters and with each visit the boys become more fascinated by the lily pads (above picture taking on 8/22/20).  Lily pads are hydrophobic. No matter how many waves or how tumultuous the water, the pad will remain above water, gathering the water into surface tension puddles allowing it to run off the pad back into the lake.  My boys have tried desperately to get those lily pads to sink and they just won’t do it and their resistance is a beautiful and graceful reaction to witness.

Those lily pads had me thinking again about peace and the peace Christ promises particularly in John 14:27.  It isn’t a peace absent of conflict, chaos or storm.  It isn’t a peace of calm and quiet.  It is a peace like the peace of a lily pad.  The very thing that it requires to live, water, also threatens to drown it at every turn.  Yet the lily pad is shielded from drowning through its hydrophobic characteristic.  Christ is our hydrophobic characteristic. Christ’s peace gives us the ability to gather that which threatens to drown us, together into beautiful puddles and let them run off. We will be affected by the chaos, we will feel it and it will gather on our lives, but we will not drown because Christ gives, not as the world gives, not in quiet, calm or lack of conflict, but in presence in the storm, strength in weakness and an endurance of faith found in community, just like those lily pads.

This fall we will once again hear and contemplate the grand drama of God’s relationship with humanity and we will explore God’s patterns of peace and justice with, for and through the people of God.  It was never and it will never be a life without chaos, but it also isn’t and will never be a life without the peace of Christ.

- Pr. Hannah