19. A Strange Peace
19
A Strange Peace
Shortly before my daughter Valerie, my only child, went off to college as a freshman, that “sudden tide” came over me one morning as I was working in the kitchen. She had been the great joy of my life for seventeen years. When she was about eleven or twelve, friends heard me speak of what seemed to me a near-perfect mother-daughter relationship. “Oh, but wait till she’s a teenager!” they warned. “Then you’ll have some rough times.” I was still waiting. I could not conceive of life without her.
“She has grown up,” I told myself. “My job is finished, the job I loved more than anything else I have ever done. The nest is about to empty.”
Overcome with sadness, I sat down at the wicker table, picked up the phone, and dialed Van, who is the sort of friend you don’t have to explain things to. As I talked I began to cry.
“It’s ok, Bet,” she said quietly. “It’ll be ok.”
She did not need to explain to me what she meant. She knew I understood. We believe the same things—things like All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.1 But I needed to hear her say it. I needed to have the Word made flesh for me in her voice.
My soul was in turmoil that morning, presented with a new set of marching orders as Kathy’s was when her youngest was going away. New circumstances would open new fields for trust, a new power to help “complete the tale,” if only my response was YES.
Van’s simple word, “It’ll be ok,” encouraged me to trust and obey. I learned that in this renunciation I had what the seed has that falls into the ground—a new potential for life-giving. I would be lonely, but I now had something precious to offer in love to my Lord, which in turn would make something quite different out of my loneliness. In some mysterious way which I could not predict, that offering would bring forth fruit. It would make a difference to the wholeness of the body of which I was but a single member.
The “wholeness” of the Body. It dawned on me with new understanding—the wholeness of the Body is the holiness of the Body. A healthy body is healthy in all its parts. As each individual member grows in holiness, the Body grows in wholeness. Holiness is what matters to God. The holiness or the wholeness of one member of the Body makes a difference to all the rest.
The way I respond to the “givens” in my daily experience determines my growth in holiness. When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” God answers that prayer, measuring out just what we need for spiritual as well as physical growth. He knows that spiritual stamina cannot develop without conflict. We must take with both hands the thing given, submissively, humbly, sometimes courageously, or even, as one friend put it, “defiantly”—saying to ourselves, This is part of the story, the story of the love of God for me and of my love for Him.
This is acceptance in the truest sense. This is where real peace is found—that strange, inexplicable peace Jesus promised.
Rumer Godden, in her novel In This House of Brede, describes the meaning of a certain monastery’s logo:
The motto was Pax, but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Peace: but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at night, little comfort, sometimes scant food; beset with disappointments, and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. “It is My own peace I give unto you,” not, notice, the world’s peace.2
The only crown Jesus ever wore on earth was a crown of thorns.
What does that crown tell us about the love of God the Father? Much every way. For one thing, it tells us that His love is not a sentimental thing, for it was strong enough to hurt His own Son. He could have rescued Him with “legions of angels.” He did not do so.
What does the crown of thorns tell us about the love of God the Son? It tells us that it was strong enough to deny itself, strong enough to suffer. He could have evaded the crown and the Cross. If He had taken Satan up on his offers in the wilderness, He would have evaded both. He did not do so. He had set His face like a flint, and moved with flintlike resolution down that course, with all its humiliations, interruptions, demands, disappointments, and deprivations (this was the context of the peace He proffers us). He went straight to Jerusalem, and He went filled with joy and gratitude and love.
To be a Christian is to make the kind of choices which bring us daily into an ever greater and closer harmony with the Spirit of Christ. We cannot, indeed, be Christians at all unless we have within us that Spirit. As we make those choices in the freedom of the will God gave us, we find life and joy and peace. Jesus found His joy and peace, His very “meat,” in the Father’s will. The servant (may we never forget) is not “greater than his Master.”
What if we choose to say NO?
It is a perilous choice. When Moses made his concluding charge to the people of Israel in Moab, he reviewed the history of God’s faithfulness to them. Then he said,
If there should be among you a man or woman, family or tribe, who is moved today to turn from the Lord our God and to go worshipping the gods of those nations—if there is among you such a root from which springs gall and wormwood, then when he hears the terms of this oath, he may inwardly flatter himself and think, “All will be well with me even if I follow the promptings of my stubborn heart”; but this will bring everything to ruin.
Deuteronomy 29:18–19 NEB
This “root of bitterness” is mentioned also in Hebrews, following a passage which links holiness with peace. One who forfeits the grace of God is like a bitter, noxious weed which poisons the lives of others. Refusal to accept grace isolates, as a sulking child, wrapped up in his own misery, refuses comfort.
One evening when my grandson Jim Elliot Shepard was almost three, he found that his parents were going out and he was to be left with Granny. He began to cry, and when the door closed he threw himself on the floor in the hallway, kicking, screaming, beating his head on the carpet. I picked him up in my arms, which required no small effort as he stiffened and howled.
“Jim, would you like me to read you a story?”
Vigorous head shaking and howling.
“Let’s go and rock in the big chair.”
More howling.
“Jim, sweetheart—shall I get you some apple juice?”
The very personification of desolation and misery, he only roared and bellowed—“No! No! No! I want Mama!”
I tried everything and then, in my desperation, remembered to pray. Why hadn’t I thought of that first? I asked the Lord to show me how to comfort him.
“Shall we go outside, Jim?”
Instantly he relaxed in my arms, turned his tear-stained face up to mine, and, choking with sobs, nodded yes.
Still holding him in my arms, I opened the door to the carport. The heavy sweetness of jasmine filled the warm Mississippi night. He took a deep breath, as though inhaling the very peace of God. In a tiny whisper he said, “Granny—maybe we’ll see some stars.”
I carried him into the backyard where we could look up through the trees. He was quiet for a long time, nestling into my shoulder, gazing silently at the spangled sky. Then—“Granny, those are crickets I hear. Do you hear them, Granny?”
The quest for satisfaction apart from the love of God is as futile as poor little Jim’s refusal of the only comfort that was available to him that evening. He wanted Mama, and Mama was not there. Once he accepted what was offered, he came out of the howling wilderness of his misery and found peace.
My theme is oblation—the offering up of ourselves, all we are, have, do, and suffer. Sacrifice means something received and something offered.
But some may be wondering, How, exactly, do I do this? I hesitate to prescribe a method for so solemn and vital a spiritual transaction. God knows your heart and will accept your offering in any way you can make it, I am sure, but a very simple thing has helped me. It is to kneel with open hands before the Lord. Be silent for a few minutes, putting yourself consciously in His presence. Think of Him. Then think of what you have received in the four categories mentioned (are, have, do, suffer)—the gift of a child, for example, or, years later, the empty nest; the gift of work or the inability to work; marriage or singleness; pleasures or burdens; joy or sorrow. Next, visualize as well as you can this gift, resting there in your open hands. Thank the Lord for whatever aspect of this gift you can honestly thank Him for—if not for the thing in itself, then for its transformability, for His sovereignty, His will which allows you to have this gift, His unfailing love, the promise of His presence in deep waters and hot fires, the pattern for good which you know He is at work on. Then, quite simply, offer it up. Make God’s gift to you your oblation to Him. Lift up your hands. This is a physical act denoting your love, your acceptance, your thanksgiving, and your trust that the Lord will make of it something redemptive for the wholeness of the Body, even for the life of the world.
Do not look for dramatic effects. There may be no discernible result. As my dear friend Frank Murray, an elder brother to me in the Lord, said regarding a matter we had prayed about, “It is a mistake to measure such things by introspection. He heard and answered. That is all there is to it. Let the answer be manifested in His own time and way.”
I think you will begin to know the strange peace that is not the world’s kind.