My mum was a Christmas cooking genius! Every year as the Christmas season began, she would churn out cookies, gingerbread, and candies made from marzipan and shaped and coloured like Christmas ornaments. There was Christmas cake and pudding, and chocolate snowballs (balls of cookie dough rolled in coconut). It was awesome!
My parents always went overboard with Christmas. We had a grand Christmas Eve meal (which we could not eat due to our excitement), and then opened Christmas gifts. Christmas morning meant ‘stockings’ (pillowcases stuffed with toys, colouring books, crayons, and candy), church worship service, followed by a gigantic meal with guests and family visiting. It was certainly our ‘favourite time of the year’, which all seems a little strange now as we were a country at war.
This may not be so strange when we consider that Jesus was born in a time of unrest, war and global chaos as well.
The prophet called Him the Prince of Peace, and on that night when He was born, Angels sang and rejoiced at the promise of Peace that came with the birth of this special baby boy.
He came with the promise of peace but not peace as we understand it. It was different, strange, and a lasting peace between man and God, something the world had longed for since the beginning of time!
PEACE: One may define this as the absence of trouble. But this peace is external and temporary, based on the changing circumstances of life around us. We live in a world of chaos, turmoil, financial crisis, and war so peace today may be gone tomorrow. Peace is not just the absence of turmoil but also the presence of something else. Better defined, Peace is not the absence of trouble but the absence of anxiety and fear in spite of trouble and turmoil because of the presence of God with us…Immanuel.
REAL PEACE: It is something discovered in the confines of one’s heart – a sense of rest, calmness – when the Prince of Peace makes His home there. It is not temporary and based on our external circumstance, but something lasting, based on the promise and power of an eternal God and fuelled by a confidence in His love, His presence with us!
PEACE: You just have to watch this video from the Bible Project below! They give such a wonderful and deeper explanation of Shalom Peace, the peace that Jesus gives yet the world cannot understand.
Pass it on. Share it with someone else. My prayer for you this Advent season is that you would not only stumble on the Peace that He promises and holds out to you, but that you would also be an agent of Peace, the missing piece in bringing peace to someone else in turmoil, anxiety, and longing for rest.
God Bless you this Advent and Peace be with you…Amen.
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…”… Peace, Shalom, Rest in Jesus!
