By J.R. Miller
Peace is possible to every believer in Christ. No Christian can say, "That is beautiful. It shines in my friend's face like heaven's radiance. But it is not for me." The peace of God is for the believer. God shows no favoritism in dispensing this blessing. There is great diversity in the natural gifts and abilities bestowed upon individuals. A violet could never be a rose. An apple-tree could never become an oak. A sparrow could never reach the eagle's flight. An owl could never learn the canary's song. Not all men can become fine artists. Not all women can become sweet singers. If it were art, or music, or eloquence, or the poet's power, which was set before us as the ideal of a true life, many of us might say, "I never can attain that!" In matters of natural endowment God divides to each one--as he will.
But best of God's grace is open to all of his children. The divine peace is not for a few: it is a blessing which all may obtain. No matter how restless, how turbulent, how full of care, how naturally given to worry and anxiety one may be--this sweet, quiet, restful peace of God is possible of attainment.
Yet there are a great many godly people, who have not yet learned the secret of peace. There are Christian men in business, and in the midst of life's affairs, who are always full of care, fearful of the outcome of their ventures, restless, tossed on the bosom of life's rough sea like leaves on the billows. There are women, Christian women, who love Christ and read their Bible, and pray, and partake of the Lord's Supper, and work in the Sunday school, and in missionary societies, and who are very dear to Christ, yet whose lives are certainly full of little anxieties. They are easily annoyed. Their faces show lines of care and fret. Now and then they have brief seasons of restful trust, when they seem to have gotten the victory--but in a little while, they are back again in the old broken restlessness.
This is not the best that the religion of Christ can do for us. More than two hundred and fifty times does the word "peace" occur in the Bible. Paul, the homeless, hunted, suffering apostle, used it more than forty times, writing it oftentimes in prison, with a chain rattling on his wrist as he wrote. One of our Lord's sweetest farewell words was, "Peace I leave with you;" and when he came from the grave, three times did the blessing fall from his lips: "Peace be unto you." The ideal life for a believer in Christ--is one of peace.
It is very evident that this life of peace is not a life without care. Christ nowhere suggests the thought that his disciples are lifted out of the common conditions of life--into a sheltered pilgrimage, where the storms do not beat upon them, where sickness and pain do not reach them, where there are no disagreeable people to live with, and no adversities and disappointments to mar the calmness and quietness of the life from year to year.
He said expressly, that he did not want his disciples taken out of the world. The Christian is called to live in the midst of the ordinary conditions of life. The winds blow no more softly for him. The wicked are no more gentle, because one of God's children is beside them. Sickness turns not away from a home, because one of Christ's little ones dwells there. Circumstances are no more kindly, because it is a Christian who is being hurt by their pitiless grind.
Care is one of the conditions of human life. The birds have no care. The lambs that feed in the meadows have no care. As life grows in the things that ennoble it, and make it worthy, care increases. The love, which the religion of Christ teaches, makes our hearts more and more sensitive, and instead of taking us out of the world's trying experiences, it makes us feel its hardships and burdens all the more. Life's relationships all bring with them burden and anxiety. The peace, which Christ promises, is not made by emptying a little spot of all the darkness, suffering, and troubles--and setting us down into it.
Nor, is this peace produced by so changing our nature that we shall not feel the things which cause pain and disturbance. To do this, our hearts would have to be robbed of the very qualities in them, which are noblest and divinest. Only think what it would mean to you--to have taken out of your life, the possibility of suffering from the trials, the losses, the injustices and wrongs, the sorrows of life. To be made so that you would not feel these things--would be to lose out of your heart, the power to love and to sympathize.
Our purest joys, and our deepest sufferings--lie very close together. To have the capacity to love and be happy, is to have also the capacity to suffer. Religion makes our hearts gentler, more thoughtful, more sympathetic, and prepares us to be pained more--not less--by the frictions, the trials, and the frets of life. The Christian suffers no less in sorrow, trial, and care, because they are Christian; he probably suffers more. It is no easier, in human sense, for a friend of Christ to meet disappointments, adversities, bereavements, and loses, and to endure the frictions and annoyances of life--than it is for the worldly person; it may be harder. It is not by dulling the sensibilities, that Christ gives peace. It is a peace in the heart which he gives, a peace which one may have within, while without storms are raging; a calm in the soul in the midst of external agitations and tumults; a quiet restfulness which holds the life in a serene composure even while all things seem to be disastrous; a spirit unperturbed, unfretted, unruffled--in the midst of life's multitudinous cares.
What is the secret of this peace? How is it to be gotten? Paul gives the answer in two very definite counsels. The first is, "In nothing be anxious." Anxiety is worry. We cannot help having things in life that would naturally make us anxious. Yet come what may--we are not to be anxious.
There are reasons for this counsel. Worry does no good. It changes nothing. Worrying over a disappointment does not give us the thing we wanted. Worrying about the weather does not make it cold or warm, cloudy or sunny. Worrying over a loss does not give us back the thing we prized. Our Lord reminds us of the uselessness of worry when he says that by being anxious about our stature we cannot make ourselves any taller.
Anxiety enfeebles and wastes one's strength. One day's worry, exhausts a person more than a whole week of quiet, peaceful work. It is worry, not overwork, as a rule, which kills people. Worry keeps the brain excited, the blood feverish, the heart working wildly, the nerves quivering, and the whole machinery of the life in unnatural tension, and it is no wonder then that people break down.
Anxiety mars one's work. Nobody can do the best work when fevered by worry. One may rush and always be in great haste, and may talk about being busy, fuming and sweating as if he were doing ten person's duties, and yet some quiet person alongside, who is moving leisurely and without any anxious haste, is probably accomplishing twice as much--and doing it better. Fluster unfits one for good work.
Anxiety irritates and frets oneself. A sweet spirit is an essential feature of every beautiful life. Ungoverned temper is not only unchristian--but is also most unlovely. There may be a difference of taste concerning many matters. What one thinks very beautiful in dress or manner, another may condemn. But no one thinks bad temper, lovely. Yet worry leads to irritability, makes one censorious, querulous, of a complaining, repining spirit. One cannot have a uniformly sweet spirit, patient, gentle, amiable, without peace in the heart. Peace makes the face lovely, even in homeliness.
Peace curbs the tongue, that it shall speak no hasty, ill-advised, impatient words. It gives quiet dignity to all the movements. Anxiety spoils many a disposition, and writes lines of unrest and care upon many a face, which ought to keep lovely into old age.
Then, anxiety is sin. It is not a mere unhappy thing--which wastes the strength, mars the work, and hurts the temper; it is also distrust of God. We say we believe in the love of God, and then we worry over what he sends--the circumstances he appoints for us, the tasks he sets for us, the place he assigns us, the path in which he leads us, the way he deals with us. Worry is sin.
Hence we are to set it down as a positive rule--that we are never to be anxious. There are no exceptions. We are not to say that our case is peculiar; than even Job would be impatient if he had our trials; that even Moses would lose his temper if he had our provocations; or even Paul would worry if he had our cares. This law of life has no exceptions, "In nothing be anxious." What then shall we do with the things, which would naturally worry us? Paul tells us "In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God."
That is, instead of being fretted and distracted over the things which we cannot control, we are to put them out of our own hands into God's--by specific prayer--and leave them there. No human wisdom can explain the mysteries of life. No human hand can take the strange complication of life's events and so adjust them that they will make beauty and happiness. But there is One to whose wisdom all life's mysteries are open and clear. There is no confusion in this world as God's eye looks upon events. What is keen trial to us today--he sees resulting in blessing and good a little while hence. The thousand apparently tangled circumstances and events, amid which our life is moving--are to him, threads with which perfect lovingness is being woven.
We are not to try, therefore, to thrust from us the cares and trials which come to us clearly as God's will--but are quietly to submit to them. It is this restless struggle against the things we cannot compel out of our life--which makes such pain and bitterness for so many of us. The bird which when put in the cage flies against the wires in wild effort to be free, only bruises its body and beats its wings into bleeding wounds in unavailing struggle. Far wiser is the bird which when put in a cage, begins to sing. If we would but learn this lesson and cheerfully accept the things we cannot resist--as our Father's will for us--we would have peace in our heart and would get a blessing out of every trial.
We are told that the peace of God shall guard our hearts and thoughts. It is a military figure which is suggested--when men slept in quiet confidence in their tents, with enemies all about, because waking sentinels kept watch through all the night. Our hearts were quiet and confident in any danger, because God watches. "The Lord is your keeper." "He who keeps you shall not slumber." It is not a mere philosophy of self-preservation which is taught us. There is a keeping, which is not our own. "The peace of God shall keep your heart and thoughts." It is possible; therefore, for us so to commit all our life's sorrows, cares, and troubles to Christ, that the divine love shall wrap us around like a blessed atmosphere, quieting all fear and filling us with holy peace.
Is not the lesson worth learning at any cost? It can be learned; it has been learned. Its one secret, is perfect submission to the will of God. Every resistance or disobedience causes unrest and sorrow; but quiet acceptance, with loving confidence and joyous song, will bring the peace of God into the soul.
