Peace that passes all understanding?

Jesus said, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7

You know how sometimes a hymn or song pops into your mind out of nowhere? It happened to me recently – an old hymn that I don’t think I had even so much as thought of for years.

It was written by a nineteenth century American Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier. The first verse goes like this:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,/ Forgive our foolish ways;/ Reclothe us in our rightful mind;/ In purer lives Thy service find,/ In deeper reverence, praise.

With beautiful simplicity, Whittier prays at least three prayers: for forgiveness for “our foolish ways” (amen to that!); to be “reclothed in our rightful minds” (remember the demon-possessed man of Mark 5, whom Jesus left “clothed and in his right mind?); and for “purer lives” (amen to that too).

And so the hymn goes on – a lilting sung prayer – giving out a sense of quietness, trust and peace. For me the best words of all are in verse 5:

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,/ Till all our strivings cease;/ Take from our souls the strain and stress,/ And let our ordered lives confess/ The beauty of Thy peace.

Amen again! Oh for an end to our endless, often pointless “strivings”, oh to be free of all the “strain and stress”, oh to live, every day, “ordered lives” which reflect the beauty of God’s peace.

As the hymn played itself out in my mind I found myself thinking of the great words of Paul in Philippians 4:7: “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. Peace that “passes all understanding”! – that really is something, isn’t it?

The word “And” connects this verse with what has gone before. Paul has just urged the Christians of Philippi to “rejoice”, to be “gentle”, to not be “anxious” – and to be very serious about the duty and joy of prayer (verses 4-6). He sees the peace of God that passes all understanding as growing out of that.

I found myself wondering just how many of us can honestly say we know anything of that peace? – certainly, we seem to hear a lot about “stress-related illness” today, not least among Christians. As a fairly stress-free person (well, I am retired – I certainly can’t claim to have always been so!), it’s not for me to imply criticism of anyone, perhaps much younger than me, who finds life pretty well too much to cope with.

But the fact is that peace is presented to us in the Bible as part of what I might call “the Gospel package” – it’s right there, number three in the list, as Paul opens up “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22). Peace is part of our spiritual birthright. So perhaps we do need to give it a little thought.

Is our problem all to do with the frantic pace of modern life? I’m sure that plays a big part. But even then I remember, many years ago, an elderly Christian man who had begun his working life down a coalmine, smiling slightly cynically as this was put to him, with the suggestion that “it just wasn’t like this in your day”.

“We didn’t know about stress?” he said. “Really? We could have been thrown out of work at any moment. We worked long, dangerous hours. Our pay was pathetic. We often struggled to feed the children. When we got sick, well, that was just bad luck… And you tell me we didn’t know about stress…?”

I suppose stress and strain take different forms for different generations. I understand too that a certain amount of stress can be a good thing – it keeps us motivated, keeps the adrenalin flowing. But, as I said, these verses seem to make peace a promise, not a pious hope; notice that word “will” – this peace “will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”. And in Matthew 11:28 Jesus didn’t say “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I might give you rest”, did he?

There’s no simple coin-in-the-slot solution. There’s no point in looking back to verses 4-6 and saying, “Right then… As long as I buckle down and (a) maintain a rejoicing mood, (b) stay gentle, (c) clamp down on any form of anxiety, and (d) pray hard, then I am guaranteed the peace that passes all understanding”. No! It doesn’t work like that: God doesn’t work like that.

But if we persistently lack peace, perhaps we do need to take a look at ourselves, our attitudes, our priorities, perhaps certain aspects of our behaviour.

And in that respect a few quiet moments soaking up John Greenleaf Whittier’s lovely hymn might not be a bad place to start…

Breathe through the heats of our desire/ Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;/ Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,/ O still small voice of calm. Amen.