Peace . . .

I was thinking, driving my 17 minutes through the country to my home after work today, about peace. I just started saying the word out loud. Not sure why. I realized that I really like that word, just as a word. I like the way my lips feel when I say it. "Peace." It's a gentle word, for lack of a better description. And then to begin to think of the meaning of the thing . . . I automatically think, peace of Christ. . . not like John Lennon peace, more like Rich Mullins peace. It's kind of hard to describe what the peace of Christ is like. Simply put, it's like knowing everything's going to be okay. But following Christ doesn't mean that everything will be "okay" in life. Scary, hard things will happen. So it's too simple to just say that it means that everything will be okay. It's better than that. It's like knowing that scary, hard things will happen, but at the end of a hard, scary day I will still have Christ, I will still have the hope of Heaven, and I am still loved by Love himself. It's something I always know, but as a feeling it sometimes takes a few moments to wash over me. Like when I'm really cold and I take a drink of hot tea or creamy hot coffee . . . and I feel warm moving across my body. I guess just knowing how deeply "okay" everything is going to be, like when I really know it and when I really feel it, it relaxes every muscle in my body, slowly, but surely. Oh yeah, and did I mention that I also really like the way it sounds when I say it. Peace.