Peace

"Godliness with contentment is great gain." -1 Timothy 6:6

Today's writing prompt says to write about a place that makes you feel peaceful, so I am writing about the place in which I am sitting right now. It's a small library on the third floor of the Manna House of Prayer in Concordia, Kansas.  I have only just noticed that all four walls in this room have subway tile on the bottom 2/3. This building was originally a hospital, and this room was likely not a library then. Thankfully it is now, and it's lovely. 

It's very quiet here. There's a quilt retreat happening on the first floor at the other end of the building, so it's a bit less quiet down there, of course, but here in the library all is stillness and silence.  

I have enjoyed sharing meals with the quilting ladies and hearing about the trials and joys of their passion. They have been a nice break from the quiet.

At first the quiet was too much, but over the past 24 hours, the quiet has also become peace-- peace with God and peace with myself. The verse from 1 Timothy (above) is part of it. I hear God saying contentment is about more than money--it's also about being content with who you are. I often preach that God loves you just the way you are. I need to hear it for myself, too.

This verse has also contributed to my peace:

"I will bring the blind by a way that they don’t know. I will lead them in paths that they don’t know. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. I will do these things, and I will not forsake them."

-Isaiah 42:16 WEB

Isaiah doesn't say the blind will see, but that God will lead them. It's ok if I don't always see as much as I would like to. I can trust that God does see. 

Like in Luke 9:7-9, Herod is puzzled by Jesus, but Jesus, who doesn't speak to Herod, knows. Jesus has the answers, so it's ok that I don't.  

It's all part of the journey or the process.  We don't have to have instant answers. Some things take time. This was affirmed by these words:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

And this:

"To receive spiritual direction is to recognize that God does not solve our problems or answer all our questions, but leads us closer to the mystery of our existence where all questions cease.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Spiritual Direction 

From the beginning of our time in Sterling, I have been saying "together we'll get there." God knows where "there" is, though it might just be right here, but with greater trust, joy, and peace.

Thanks, God.