Choosing Peace

It’s All About Choices…

Welcome 2021.  We are five days into the New Year, and although not much has changed in the world around us in those five days, there does seem to be a refreshing in the air.  Fresh starts have a way of bringing hope to any situation.  New perspectives can offer joy and lead to healing.

I started off this month with a study on peace, it’s been good.  Real good.  While there are great scriptures and promises of God’s provision, most of which we all know and recite, there is a theme emerging.  Peace is a choice.

That feels contradictory to most of my experiences, but I still find it to be true. The antithesis of peace is worry, fear, anxiety, tension, anger.  In almost every situation where I lack peace, I have clung to these emotions.  I have worried about money, I have feared for health and safety, I have been anxious for and about my children, I have been angry with people with whom I have unresolved conflict.  In everyone one of those scenarios I have chosen, at least for a time, to live in the emotions that directly impair my ability to live in peace.

But every day I get to choose again.  I choose to trust God or to worry.  I choose to know He is the great provider or I choose to hustle and strive.  I choose to know He is the ultimate healer or I choose to spiral and fear.  I choose to believe that He loves my children even more than I do and He has a plan for them or I choose to control and manipulate.  I choose to forgive those who have hurt me and when needed walk into the restorative conversations that those relationships require, or I choose to be angry, hurtful or avoiding.  But I do have to choose and sometimes I have to choose over and over again.  If I allow my emotions to dictate my behavior that is also a choice.  I can choose to dwell on all the possible negative things, or I can choose to follow, trust, and believe God.