Keeping the Peace

Keeping the Peace

Whenever you enter someone’s home, first say, ‘May God’s peace be on this house.’ If those who live there are peaceful, the blessing will stand; if they are not, the blessing will return to you.

Luke 10:5-6 (NLT)

Heavenly Father, meet with me here in this place. You are all I need. Fill me with your peace that it may overflow into the lives of those you have prepared for me to encounter today. Teach me to greet every space you have led me into with peace. Call me into quiet moments with you between my activities for the day so that I may be restored by your presence.

Imagine all the places you enter each day as you’re out in the world. The offices where you work, the classrooms in your school, Target, Starbucks, or wherever else you find yourself on any given day. What would it look like to greet each of those spaces with peace? What would it feel for your peace to rest with the people you encounter in those spaces? How would it feel to have your peace returned to you instead of taking on the anxiety or frustration of others?

Personally, I don’t know the answers to those questions yet. However, I’m becoming more mindful to prepare peace before moving into my next email, my next project, or my next errand. Change doesn’t happen overnight but in my early attempts to learn the answers to these questions, I find I’m less burned out and more able to be present to the people around me. The one thing I don’t feel when my attention is focused on peace is pressure.

There’s always room for innovators and world-changers. But on our increasingly anxious planet, maybe what’s really needed is a community of people prepared to trade pressure for peace.