The moment I saw the words, that familiar pit opened in my stomach again.
It was early this morning and I had been reading over my sermon, the one I would soon carry into the pulpit. I was praying quietly this morning and the house was still. The only sound was the faint hum of the furnace kicking on beneath the floor.
Two mass shootings. One at a university in the States. The other across the world, on a beach in Sydney, during a Hanukkah celebration.
Students scrambling beneath desks where they once took notes. Jewish families fleeing across sand still warm from the afternoon sun.
The numbers were still rising, but the ache was already full.
I stared at my phone screen.
One headline mentioned blood-streaked tile. Another showed a menorah overturned in the sand, one candle still burning while the tide came in.
It always takes my breath.
I immediately thought of my own church. A little building where we talk about Bethlehem’s manger and eternity in the same breath. I thought of the sanctuary trimmed with Christmas lights, and the folks who sat there last week praying for prodigal sons and stage four diagnoses.
I thought of how thin the veil is between the worship we plan and the brokenness that barrels in without knocking.
It is hard to speak of peace when the world is bleeding. It feels dishonest.
And yet here we are.
Just a few days before Christmas. The calendar curling toward the birth of Christ while the sirens wail and headlines howl. I reached for my Bible again. The page was already marked.
“Peace I leave with you.
My peace I give to you.”
It sounded impossible.
What peace? Where?
They words stood unmoved. Spoken by the only One who knew exactly what was coming and still meant every word.
They came from the mouth of a man seated at a table with His friends, hours before His arrest. Oil lamps flickered along the walls. The bread had been broken. The betrayer had left. The others sat hollow-eyed, their chests tight. They could feel it: He was leaving.
Everything was unraveling.
And He looked at them and spoke peace.
This was not the peace of Christmas cards and quiet snowfall. This was not the hush of carolers drifting across tidy streets. This peace was older. Stronger. Sharper.
It had stood once in a storm, when waves beat the sides of a boat and grown men shouted over the wind. Jesus lay sleeping in the back, head on a cushion, as thunder cracked and the sky emptied. Calm that does not come from optimism. It comes from authority. From a center so secure it does not flinch when the world bends.
That’s the peace He gives.
Not offers. Gives.
And He gives it not to the brave or the self-assured, but to the ones who would scatter. The ones who would run.
These disciples were ordinary men, slow to understand, quick to argue, prone to fear.
Peter would swear he never knew Him before the rooster crowed. The rest would vanish like breath in winter air. And still, to them, to these weary, trembling men, Jesus gave peace.
Only a King who speaks peace because His Kingdom cannot be shaken.
A Shepherd who stays when the wolves come close.
A Savior who walks toward the cross with both eyes open.
Friends, that offer has never changed.
Jesus does not give peace as the world gives it. The world’s peace needs headlines to quiet down and funerals to finish. It hinges on good outcomes. It hangs on the hope that maybe this time, the pain will pass quickly.
But Christ gives a peace that holds through the ache.
He gives it to the ones who don’t have answers. To the ones shaken by evil so dark it feels untouchable. To the pastor wondering what to preach and how to explain.
If He gave it to Peter, He will give it to you.
If He gave it to the sons of thunder, to the one who touched His scars and still hesitated, to the man who always spoke too soon and acted too late….He will give it to you.
He gives it gladly.
Peace settles low, not loud.
You feel it when your voice steadies mid-prayer, even though the tears haven’t stopped. When you remember a verse that holds, even as the news unravels.
It is Christ near. A weight in the room. A stillness that does not come from your own strength.
He does not explain away the storm. He sits with you while it rages. He stays. And something inside you remembers how to breathe again.
This peace is not earned. It cannot be conjured. It is not the result of trying harder to believe.
It is received.
It comes to the one who is finally quiet. Who finally stops rehearsing the what-ifs and simply comes to Christ with hands open.
He does not promise the path will grow smooth and He does not promise that fear will vanish or that pain will leave quietly. He promises something better.
He promises Himself.
In a world of gunshots and unexpected phone calls, there is still a throne. There is still a King. And He is not wringing His hands. He is not shaken by the things that shake us.
He is holding out peace like bread.
And He does not give it with reluctance.
He gives it with joy.
I closed the Bible and stood for a long moment before heading to the door to warm up my truck for the drive to church.
Outside, frost had formed on the windows.
Inside my chest, the chaos had quieted.
His peace had not come all at once.
But it had come.
Great article. So true.
It’s not the kind of peace that can be described. It’s a kind of peace that brings a sort of awe with it. The kind of awe that comes from knowing that the God Who made you knew you would need this kind of peace from eternity past, Who knew that you could never earn it or deserve it, but chose to love you enough to give it to you anyway.