Immanuel: He is Our Peace

So on Monday morning, after all of the Thanksgiving guests had left, I crept downstairs, eager to enjoy a cup of coffee in the predawn silence. We’d already decorated the Christmas tree (gotta do it when the kids are home)…

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…and as heart-warming as it is to watch six people climb on your bookshelves and elbow each other out of the way while carols from Pandora’s “Country Christmas” drown out the announcer on the U.Va. basketball game, I was ready for some peace and quiet. I looked forward to turning on the tree lights, grabbing my Bible, and spending a few moments with God.

And then I heard…snoring.

It was loud. And it was coming from the family room. Had a late-night intruder gotten into our Baileys? Would I find a strange man on the sofa? Should I go back upstairs and wake Robbie?

I tiptoed through the kitchen and quickly turned on the lights:

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Khaki.

The dog is not supposed to get on the sofa. I didn’t fully trust her arthritic legs or her tumor-filled belly to keep her down, so I’d put out a spread of books and magazines as a deterrent. To which Khaki said, “Nice try.”

I was not happy.

I didn’t like how the dog had treated my copy of Southern Lady, nor did I appreciate having to get out the lint brush. Again. Even more than these offenses, though, was the fact that Khaki had rearranged all my pillows. One of them wound up on the floor:

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I stood there, listening to the dog drone and looking at my fallen PEACE, and I thought: This is it. This is what my life has become. I get the peace all set in my life, tucked in among the beautiful velvet and linen, and then something comes along to knock it off.

Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’re staring down the weeks between now and Christmas, wishing you could experience the whole “peace on earth, good will toward men” thing, but there’s a little niggle of anxiety, or maybe even fear, that is holding you back. Maybe it’s a decision you have to make, or a deadline you are facing. Maybe it’s a sickness, or a loss, or the sense that you don’t have what it takes to do whatever it is that you feel like you are supposed to do. Or maybe it’s something totally unfounded, but still sort of paralyzing, like the time I went shopping with my mother-in-law and we got half way to the mall when she was suddenly struck by a frightening thought:  What if the stores are closed on Monday?

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I let worry – both about real concerns and and imagined ones – consume my attention. But that is the exact opposite of how God wants us to live. “Do not be anxious about anything,” he says, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

And when we do that – when we refuse to entertain anxiety and instead bring our requests straight to God – he offers this promise:  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

Sounds like a plan.

But, like so many good things in life, choosing to take our worries to God and trade them in for his peace is easy to say and hard to do. It takes practice. It might even take retraining our brains, so that our default position is not so much dwelling on doubt as it is on tacking our trust to God’s promises. It’s do-able, but we might need help.

Which is where Immanuel comes in. Of all the names God goes by, I think Immanuel might be my favorite. It’s not one we think about for most of the year, but when you start opening Christmas cards and listening to carols, it pops up. And, to me, Matthew 1:23 is one of the best lines in the whole Christmas story:  The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”). 

If you’re feeling like your peace is on the floor this Christmas, and you aren’t really sure how to pick it up and get it settled into your life, invite Immanuel to come in and help. He is the order in our chaos, the stability in our insecurity, the anchor in our storm. He is “God with us.”
And, in that very name, he is our peace.
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The Cleats of Peace

So my Bible Study group is halfway through Priscilla Shirer’s Armor of God series, and this week the lesson is all about the shoes of peace.

I can’t recap the whole teaching, but the nutshell version is that we cannot survive the storms of life unless we have God’s peace. Peace is what secures our footing. It provides stability. It allows us to to both stand firm and to move forward when everything around us seems like a chaotic mess.

Which is why, I guess, the Apostle Paul chose to focus on shoes as the piece of Roman armor that correlates to peace. And listening to Priscilla describe the sandals that the soldiers wore (lots of laces for ankle support, cutaways to provide ventilation and allow for movement, and thick leather soles with hobnails sticking out the bottom to allow a soldier to “dig in”), I couldn’t help but think that Paul could have picked a better word in Ephesians 6:15. Shoes are nice, but what we really need in life is a good pair of cleats.

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Because life (and buckle up, because here comes a Deep Thought) is a whole lot like lacrosse.

Robbie plays for Sewanee: The University of the South. As an attackman, his job is to put the ball in the goal. The opponent’s job is to stop him, using what looks (to a mother, anyway) like anything short of murder. Robbie plays with a short stick; his defender has a long one, and even with all of the padding that some NCAA person decided the guys needed to wear, my boy comes out of every single game with slash marks, bruises, and even (on more than one occasion) the entire imprint of some other guy’s lacrosse head (strings and all) embedded into his body, like a 3-D tattoo.

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Sometimes, it’s not just the defenders who make life hard. Sometimes it’s the environment. When Robbie was growing up, we watched games where it was 118 degrees on the turf and the refs had to stop the game every ten minutes so that the players could hydrate. We also saw contests in the sleet and snow, where the field turned into a slippery, icy mess. And, now that Robbie is at Sewanee (which is on the top of a mountain), there are some games we have not watched at all, simply because there was nothing to see. Here’s the snap Annesley took on the sidelines last weekend:

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I’d go on, but you get the idea. Life is hard, and we all take hits. Sometimes we find ourselves on slippery ground, or searching to find our way in the fog. Paul wasn’t kidding when he said that in order to stand firm and be ready to move, we’d need the right footwear.

So how do we get that? How do we strap on our own shoes of peace?

I wish I had pages and pages so that I could rip off everything that Priscilla Shirer had to say. Her study is seriously fabulous, and if you want to get the whole thing, click here. In the meantime, though, I’ll leave you with my favorite takeaway:

Trust fuels thanksgiving. Thanksgiving activates peace.

If you want a life that is marked by peace – the kind that cannot be shaken, no matter how hard you get hit, how slippery the ground is, or how foggy the future looks – start with trust. Isaiah 26:3 promises “perfect peace” when you trust God and keep your thoughts fixed on him. You can shore up that trust (supporting your ankles and digging your spikes into the ground) by taking hold of some Bible verses and letting their truth soak into your heart and mind until they become an anchor, firm and secure. (If that’s new territory and you aren’t sure where to start, post a comment on this blog to let me know what your need or concern is and I’ll message you back with a few of my favorite Scripture promises.)

Trust fuels thanksgiving. And thanksgiving, when wrapped around the concerns and requests in your life, activates peace. Check out the progression in Philippians 4:6-7:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So here’s the action plan, as best as I can tell:  Trust God. Cover your concerns with thanksgiving. And get yourself a good pair of peace cleats so you can stand your ground and be ready to go, no matter what life throws your way.

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