Right now Veggie Tales is blaring in the background, my son is crying and screaming because he doesn't want to go to sleep, and my daughter is clamoring for a snack (even though she just ate breakfast). I have papers stacked up to grade, a messy house as a backdrop, and a do-to list that's collecting dust.
But those are just excuses, aren't they?
After all, whose life isn't crazy, especially when you have small children and an outside job? When Aaron got home yesterday, I knew I needed to take a time out. And since exercise and outdoors rejuvenate me better than anything else, I chose to take a ten-minute walk with God. I needed to do some confessing, some listening, and yes, I did some complaining.
When the time came for me to return to the house, I wasn't ready. I didn't want the quiet reflection to end. I didn't want the solitude to end. But since most of us can't live like monks, we have to chose to take our peace with us into the chaos of life.
True peace can come in chaos though.
It's not going to be easy, and we do need those moments of solitude, but most of our choices have to come through the difficult circumstances, not in absence of them.
Even right now, as I write out my thoughts, I am interrupted every 30 seconds to answer a question, fulfill a need, hold a crying baby, etc. It's not easy to keep my patience in check. It's not easy to stay tuned into God's heart. It's really, really hard. But it is possible. And it's what He desires for us, to rest in Him when the world swirls and storms around us.
You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
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