Day 9
Peace of God Through the Presence of God
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7
As humans, deep down, we all want “the Peace of God” without even knowing what that is or what it feels like. We all have a longing or void until He comes into our lives. As a child, I grew up believing in God, but I had a more distant view of Him. Even as I professed my faith in Jesus Christ, I wrestled with the fact that He loved me individually, not corporately. It wasn’t until college that I really became aware of the need for a daily quiet time to meditate on Scripture and apply it to my life. Pressures developed the need to apply Philippians 4:6-7 in my life. Taking my anxieties to God in prayer and thanking Him for all His blessings, allowed the Peace of God in my life, through His presence, to keep my heart and mind focused on Him.
My husband and I were put in a quandary when we started dating a few weeks before he was to graduate and I was pursuing professional school. After seeking God’s will in this, I began vet school one year, married, then spent the next three years finishing school with God carrying us through a long-distance commuter marriage. We both had to rely on Him even more as we were coming together as husband and wife.
After graduation, I exclusively practiced a couple of years, and then we started our family. Prayer became even more important as I realized how great the responsibility was to raise children in the admonition of the Lord and to train them up in the way they should go. Too soon, they were the ones in college, growing in their own walks with the Lord.
Transitioning from childcare to eldercare presented new challenges of walking through “The Long Goodbye” of Alzheimer’s, cancer, and chronic joint pain. COVID entered the world and we said goodbye to three parents in eleven months, none from COVID itself. God gave us peace with each passing because they each knew and followed the Lord. The Presence of God in a person’s life when they trust Christ as their personal Lord and Savior is the key to Peace. God reaches out and we have the choice to respond to His invitation. Then His Peace can enter our lives even during the hardest times.
Three weeks after my father-in-law’s funeral, I worked a full day, came home, ate and went to bed. The next morning I couldn’t wake up properly and after two days of largely sleeping and feeling disconnected from my left side, I went to the ER. I was told that I had severe anemia and COVID which had caused a stroke in the back of my head. They didn’t know why I wasn’t blind and immobile, and they kept me in isolation for ten days. Never had I been in such a low state, and my mind turned back to the story of the storm with Christ asleep in the boat. I cried out and immediately Christ was with me and His Peace filled that empty hospital room. Once before, when I was sitting with my grandmother on her deathbed, I had experienced His Presence like that as she passed on into Heaven.
From that point on, I knew whether I lived or died, He was with me. On the sixth day of my hospitalization, they gave me blood and I asked for a doctor to evaluate why my counts were still dropping. On Day 8, he found the colon tumor before discharging me on Day 10. By Day 16, I obstructed and had surgery to remove the cancer on Day 18. Through port placement, twelve rounds of heavy metal chemotherapy, followed by my daughter’s journey through treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I fully know God is real and loves us individually. He sent His Son to die for us so that we can have fellowship here and throughout eternity. His Holy Spirit comforts us through all of our afflictions if we will only yield to His invitation to come into our lives and be our Peace, so that we can reflect that Peace to others despite life’s storms.
FURTHER REFLECTION:
How can you demonstrate the Peace of God given to you to others around you who may not know Him yet?
PRAYER:
God, thank You for sending Your Son to die for me in order that I might have Peace with You and from You. Help me demonstrate that Peace to a lost and dying world so that they t0o may have a relationship with You. Amen.
FOR FURTHER STUDY:
Deuteronomy 31:6, Luke 8:22-25, Romans 5:1
by Rose Roose