DISTURBING THE PEACE

I'm guilty of disturbing the peace--my own peace. I repeatedly do that by overvaluing my own opinons.  When I cling to a certain viewpoint as if my life depended on it and fail to see that such an opinion is no more than something I thought up, I am easily disturbed when someone challenges it. I get into that trap by wanting something desperately or when I am afraid something bad might happen. On the other hand, when I trust God to supply my every need, I am calm. Isaiah understood, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." This is what Thomas a Kempis suggested to his fellow monks in the middle ages, by advising them to stop paying so much attention to each other and focus on their own inner self and on God. I get out of the trap by refusing to give all my attention to things going on in my world and get very still. There I experience the difference in the temporary and the eternal. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin in me.