GREAT PEACE, AND PERFECT PEACE: Within the Big Uneasy

Scripture:  Psalm 119:165 - Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing can make them stumble. Isaiah 26:3 - You will keep in perfect peace, all those whose minds are staid on Thee, because they trust in You.

Peace is the ticket to Joy when all about is falling apart.  When Faithfulness shows, Peace is an ever-ready partner.  Love at its height, inherently invites risk, and without Peace, may stall. Minus its muscle, and strain, and reach, and urge, Courage is Peace. And when Patience is really, really needed, its exceptional showing presumes Peace.

Whenever common sense falls short in the face of crisis or catastrophe, whenever chaos blurs the possibility for clarity, whenever darkness overwhelms us and hides the preferable path to be on, the needful step to be taken will be taken more boldly when there is peace. The discerning of the evidences will be better handled when there is peace.

But this manner of peace is not common, but rather is uncommon, described in our parallel verses as being 'great' and 'perfect'... yet available.

Psalm 1 could be understood to say At Peace Are They Whose Contemplations Thrive Upon The Lord's Ways, Fruitful Unto Life, Day By Day, Delighting One And All In The Sacred...Walking Out The Word, In Hope.

Peace remembers a 'Higher Ground', here and now...until then. Peace remembers its Author, and that is blessing, which when yielded to, overcomes all else.

Perfect peace is perfecting peace...how wonderful are its fingerprints. And great peace is big enough to be small.

But Peace cannot, ought not be confused with indifference or passivity.

Considering the metaphoric 'whole armor of God', we have 'feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace' [Ephesians 6:15] coincident with confrontational language of taking, and standing, and wrestling, where peace  is that prerequisite characteristic that permits all else by a right stance, to stand, and to advance, and enter the tumult ever near.

Having peace, 'Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." Matthew 5:9

Before being laid to rest bodily, after a long bout with tuberculosis, history would hold the account of one lanky U.S. Army infantry medic whose christian faith had shone brightly across unimaginable circumstances. There were two categories of distinction to note: his fervor to embrace his bible and study, and pray, and his exemplary conduct during combat as a medic, not to be considered mutually exclusive.

The time was May, 1945 and the place, a very imposing rock-cliff in Okinawa named the Maeda Escarpment, where American and Japanese soldiers fought violently for strategic advantage. This skinny, bible-toting medic was Desmond Thomas Doss at the base of the cliff with his fellow troops, all needing to ascend by ropes upward into battle where the losses were expected to be great. This cliff was also known as Hacksaw Ridge. The occasion was World War II.

The bitter fighting had the Americans needing to retreat once scaling the cliff with many dead, dying, and wounded left on the field, but one did not leave the war torn plateau, because of his personal mission to bring back the wounded, an impulse largely fueled by his faith. Singularly he resolved to bring back 75 wounded soldiers, one by one, himself taking on injury by gunshot, and grenade explosion, avoiding the opposition, and dragging his fellow soldiers to the edge of the cliff, where he painstakingly lowered them down the face of the cliff. He accomplished this remarkably having no gun of his own, much as he had no weapon throughout his Army training, being a conscientious objector, following the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill.'.

He received the highly regarded Medal of Honor, as well as the Purple Heart, the Good Conduct Medal, and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal.

He also accepted the Presidential Unit Citation for his fellow soldiers, as they returned to the plateau and captured it.

Doss was the only conscientious objector ever to receive a Medal of Honor. [he called himself a conscientious cooperator]

"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work..." 2 Corinthians 9:8  

Prayer:  Dear Lord, thank You, for the gift of peace through Jesus. I pray that Your Spirit helps me to brandish it well, becoming a purveyor of peace, so necessary for this season we have.  Through it all, may my living communicate that 'it is well with my soul'.  Bless You Lord.

(by Dr. McNeal Brockington)