Ensley’s Ensights
And Now May the Peace of Christ…
Early in December, I sit down to select poems to be read during our Christmas Eve services. I read many lovely poems that are the right length for the service, but I have developed a rule: if I do not understand it the first time through, and have to read it to myself a second or third time, I do not select it. On Christmas Eve, you will only hear it read once, and not see it printed, so you have no opportunity to read it a second or third time to fully understand or savor its meaning.
The same is true for anything I say, or even quote in sermons. They are oral/aural exercises, in which I speak/you hear. Unless you pick up a printed copy the next week, or read it on the church website, you will only hear once what was said or quoted from the pulpit.
Last Sunday, I was speaking on the peace of Christ, and I concluded my sermon with what I thought was perhaps the best definition of what the peace of Christ might really mean in your life or mine. William Adams Brown (1865-1943), Presbyterian clergyman and professor at Union Theological Seminary, wrote this (which I have reformatted to make it a little more readable):
- “The peace of Christ is the peace of trust in the cause we serve, when service seems to fail of its end.
- It is the peace of confidence in God when all the forces of the universe seem working for ends that are undivine.
- It is the peace which can accept unexplained mysteries, which can bear heartbreaking sorrows, which can see natural instincts thwarted, holy aspirations unrealized, Christlike purposes broken off, and yet be unperturbed.
- It is the peace of a Paul rejected by his countrymen.
- It is the peace of all those who have given their lives for causes too high and sacred for immediate success and who yet have been able to believe that even their failures were being overruled by God for good.”
I hope that you, upon closer reflection on the above, might truly find the peace of Christ to become real in your life.
Senior Minister