Theologian Elizabeth Johnson points out that when we examine the entirety of Jesus’ life, language, and mission, we get a picture of Wisdom at work in partnership and mutuality:

In his brief ministry Jesus appears as the prophet and child of Sophia sent to announce that God is the God of all-inclusive love who wills the wholeness and humanity of everyone, especially the poor and heavy-burdened. He is sent to gather all the outcast under the wings of their gracious Sophia-God and bring them to shalom. This envoy of Sophia walks her paths of justice and peace and invites others to do likewise. Like her he delights in being with people; joy, insight, and a sure way to God are found in his company. Again and again in imaginative parables, compassionate healings, startling exorcisms, and festive meals he spells out the reality of the gracious goodness and renewing power of Sophia-God drawing near. . . . Scandalous though it may appear, his inclusive table community widens the circle of the friends of God to include the most disvalued people, even tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes. In all, his compassionate, liberating words and deeds are the works of Sophia reestablishing the right order of creation: “Wisdom is justified by her deeds” (Matthew 11:19). . . .

Johnson makes a connection between Jesus’ Sophia-inspired teaching and the many women who were empowered by his ministry:

Women interact with Jesus in mutual respect, support, comfort, and challenge, themselves being empowered to acts of compassion, thanksgiving, and boldness by Spirit-Sophia who draws near in him. . . . [These women] befriend, economically support, advise, and challenge Jesus, break bread with him and evangelize in his name. Others receive the gift of his healing, being empowered to stand up straight beyond physical or mental suffering, spiritual alienation, or social ostracism. . . . New possibilities of relationships patterned according to the mutual services of friendship rather than domination-subordination flower among the women and men who respond and join his circle. They form a community of the discipleship of equals.

All of this is too much for those heavily invested in the political and religious status quo. [Father Richard: The giveaway of the dominance of the masculine is the assumption that all problems can be solved by top-down power, a mistake both men and women make.] Mortally threatened, they conspire to be rid of him. In the end Jesus’ death is a consequence of the hostile response of religious and civil rulers to the style and content of his ministry, to which he was radically faithful with a freedom that would not quit. The friendship and inclusive care of Sophia are rejected as Jesus is violently executed, preeminent in the long line of Sophia’s murdered prophets. . . .

For the Christian community, the story does not end there. Faith in the resurrection witnesses that Sophia’s characteristic gift of life is given in a new, unimaginable way.

LISTEN TO THE LOVE SONG that I am continually singing to you. I take great delight in you. I rejoice over you with singing. The voices of the world are a cacophony of chaos, pulling you this way and that. Don’t listen to those voices; challenge them with My Word. Learn to take minibreaks from the world, finding a place to be still in My Presence and listen to My voice. There is immense hidden treasure to be found through listening to Me. Though I pour out blessings upon you always, some of My richest blessings have to be actively sought. I love to reveal Myself to you, and your seeking heart opens you up to receive more of My disclosure. Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

ZEPHANIAH 3:17; The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

MATTHEW 17:5; While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

MATTHEW 7:7; Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 154). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Feminine Symbols for God

Both Scripture and Tradition offer metaphors of God as female, having feminine qualities, or fulfilling traditionally female roles. This week, we consider the implications that the Divine Feminine has in our lives. Father Richard describes Mary as a feminine symbol for the divine presence: 

Although Jesus was a man, the Christ is beyond gender, so it should be expected that the Big Tradition would have found feminine ways, consciously or unconsciously, to symbolize the full Divine Incarnation and to give God a more feminine character—as the Bible itself often does.

Why did Christianity, in both the East and West, fall head over heels in love with this seemingly ordinary woman Mary, who is a minor figure in the New Testament? We gave her names like Theotokos, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Notre Dame, La Virgen of this or that, Nuestra Señora, Our Mother of Sorrows, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and Our Lady of just about every village or shrine in Europe. We are clearly dealing not just with a single woman here but a foundational symbol—or, to borrow the language of Carl Jung (1875–1961), an “archetype”—an image that constellates a whole host of meanings that cannot be communicated logically but is grounded in our collective unconscious.

In the mythic imagination, I think Mary intuitively symbolizes the first Incarnation—or Mother Earth, if you will allow me. (I am not saying that Mary is the first Incarnation, only that she became the natural archetype and symbol for it, particularly in art.) I believe that Mary is the major feminine archetype for the Christ Mystery. This archetype had already shown herself as Sophia or Holy Wisdom (see Proverbs 8:1–3; Wisdom 7:7–14), and again in the Book of Revelation (12:1–17) in the cosmic symbol of “a woman clothed with the sun and standing on the moon.” Neither Sophia nor the woman of Revelation is precisely Mary of Nazareth, yet in so many ways, both are—and each broadens our understanding of the Divine Feminine.

Jung believed that humans produce in art the inner images the soul needs in order to see itself and to allow its own transformation. Try to count how many paintings in art museums, churches, and homes show a wonderfully dressed woman offering for your admiration—and hers—an often naked baby boy. What is the very ubiquity of this image saying on the soul level? I think it looks something like this:

The first Incarnation (creation) is symbolized by Sophia-Incarnate, a beautiful, feminine, multicolored, graceful Mary.

She is invariably offering us Jesus, God incarnated into vulnerability and nakedness.

Mary became the symbol of the First Universal Incarnation.

She then hands the Second Incarnation on to us, while remaining in the background; the focus is always on the child.

Earth Mother presenting Spiritual Son, the two first stages of the Incarnation.

Feminine Receptivity, handing on the fruit of her yes.

And inviting us to offer our own yes.

God the Mother

Rabbi Rami Shapiro is a Jewish contemplative and interfaith teacher, well-versed in the Hebrew Scriptures. He describes how the Divine Feminine has been present all along as Wisdom, God’s essential partner in the creation of the cosmos:

It is no small thing to note that Wisdom is feminine. The original language of the texts, both Hebrew and Greek, make this very clear: Hebrew Chochma and Greek Sophia are both feminine nouns. The authors of the Wisdom books [such as Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, and more] took this gender specificity seriously and envisioned Wisdom as Mother, God’s consort and bride, the Divine Feminine through which the masculine God fashioned all creation. . . .

Chochma was not simply the first of God’s creations; She was the means through which all the others came forth. This is what it means to be the masterbuilder. Chochma is both created and creative. She is the ordering principle of creation: “She embraces one end of the earth to the other, and She orders all things well” (Wisdom of Solomon 8:1). To know Her is to know the Way of all things . . . and to act in accord with it is what it means to be wise. . . .

This is how Mother Wisdom works. She doesn’t change anything; She illumines everything. She is right seeing. Chochma “pervades and penetrates” all things (Wisdom of Solomon 7:24). She is the ordering principle of the universe. What you see when you see Her is analogous to seeing the grain in wood, the current of wind and oceans, and the laws of nature, both the macrocosmic and the microcosmic. . . . She is the Way things are. . . .

She is the Way God is manifest in the world. To know Her is to know God as well. [1]

Biblical scholar Virginia Mollenkott explores the frequent imagery of God as Mother in the Bible, including in surprising places in the New Testament:

More pervasive than any other biblical image of God as female is the image of a maternal deity. Not only is the Creator depicted as carrying in the womb or birthing the creation, but also Christ and the Holy Spirit are depicted in similar roles. . . .

[A] serene, transcendent image of God the Mother occurs in Acts 17:26 and 28, during Paul’s speech to the Athenian Council of the Areopagus. Paul declares that God is not dependent on anything, since God is the one who has given life and breath to everyone. Furthermore, this God is not far from any of us, for it is in God that we live, and move, and exist. Although the apostle does not specifically name the womb, at no other time in human experience do we exist within another person. Thus, Paul pictures the entire human race—people of all colors, all religions, all political and economic systems—as living, moving, and existing within the cosmic womb of the One God. [2]

A Movement of Inclusion

Diana Butler Bass writes of the diversity of Christianity’s spiritual movements, the well-known and the less so. She lists some that are known to many:  

The Benedictine renewal, the Franciscan movement, the Brethren of the Common Life, the Protestant Reformation, the Anabaptist community, the Methodist and evangelical revival, the Great Awakening, the Oxford movement, the Pentecostal revival. Others, I suspect, are remembered by no grand title. . . .

No historian can even guess how many small movements of individuals or congregations have existed in the past, movements made up of those who experienced God in new ways that remade their lives and communities without much notice or credit. Some movements lasted only a short time and were local events; others lasted decades or centuries and spread throughout Christendom. Such things are part of the long historical process of renewing faith. How would any religious tradition stay alive over hundreds or thousands of years if not for the questions of discontent and the creativity brought forth by longing? [1]

Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program, writes of his hope for the continued movement of the Church towards greater love and inclusion: 

My friend Mary Rakow says, “The Church is always trying to come to us from the future.” So, we need to allow it. Jesus lived, breathed, and embodied a boundary-subverting inclusion. If it’s inclusive, and wildly so, then you know you’re warm. You are close to it. Nothing is excluded except excluding. . . .

We are always hopeful that the Church will see its Copernican Moment, when it decides that its center is not located in Europe, in white males, in mandatory celibacy. We all hope against hope that it will become the “wonderful adventure” that Pope Francis envisions. Church as movement and not decorative institution. . . .

The gospel always wants to dislodge itself from the places where it gets stuck and embedded in the narrow, cultural structure. So, we all take steps to free it, find our way, again and again, to an expansive tolerance and a high reverence for paradox. We need to allow the Church to become a movement again. Jesus says if you’re not gathering, you’re scattering [see Matthew 12:30]. We either pull people in or push people out. We attract in the same way Jesus did. . . .

The disciples aren’t sent out to create an institution fortified by uniformity, just another tribe highly defended against all outside forces. Certainly, Western Christianity goofed some things up: it fostered separateness; it bet all its money on the “sin” horse; and it relied so heavily on external religious exercises. Clearly, we are being propelled into the world to cultivate a movement whose ventilating force is an extravagant tenderness. The disciples didn’t leave Jesus’ side with a fully memorized set of beliefs. Rather, theirs was a loving way of life that had become the air they breathed, anchored in contemplation and fully dedicated to kinship as its goal. [2]

An Opportunity for Transformation

Author and CAC teacher Brian McLaren has spent decades thinking about change in the church and why so many resist it. Here he summarizes what often happens to our religious institutions once they lose their original purpose: 

The pattern is predictable. Founders are typically generous, visionary, bold, and creative, but the religions that ostensibly carry on their work often become the opposite: constricted, change-averse, nostalgic, fearful, obsessed with boundary maintenance, turf battles, and money. Instead of greeting the world with open arms as their founders did, their successors stand guard with clenched fists. Instead of empowering others as their founders did, they hoard power. Instead of defying tradition and unleashing moral imagination as their founders did, they impose tradition and refuse to think outside the lines. A religion that cuts itself off from the example of its founder while still bearing the founder’s name often becomes little more than a chaplaincy for other ideologies, offering its services to the highest bidder. No wonder so many religious folks today wear down, burn out, and opt out.

And no wonder more and more of us who are Christians by birth, by choice, or both find ourselves shaking our heads and asking, “What happened to Christianity? What happened to Jesus and his beautiful message?” [1]

Minister, entrepreneur, and author Cameron Trimble sees the decline of church structures as an opportunity to ask questions that matter, to rediscover and renew our faith: 

What is church really about? I’ve always understood the church as being a community with a shared story in our scriptures, which binds us together. Church is about weaving relationships together so that life for all of us is more deeply rooted in Love. Today, I would offer that the church also offers a platform to work together to build a world that acts and advocates for the common good of all of us. We are warriors, lovers, peacemakers, protectors, prophets, thinkers, and dreamers who gather together to celebrate our heritage as children of God. At the same time, we are fearlessly willing to stand up and stand in for those our culture might oppress. When we live consciously aware of our power to shape our world for good, we live lives of meaning. We are our own most fully human and fully sacred expressions. We are whole. . . .

We have an opportunity in this moment of our great transformation. We can approach this time as survivors, desperately clinging to our structures and ways of being. Or, we can see ourselves as pioneers, setting out in the face of the unknown to discover new ways to live faith-filled lives. The inevitable decline of our structures gives us the chance to let go of what might hold us back from that adventure. Nothing today will be the same ten years from now. Why not architect the kind of faith movement we want to see twenty-to-fifty years from now? What do we have to lose? [2]

For centuries the Church has operated like a well-oiled machine, but the oil is running low and the machine is running down. —Ilia Delio

Franciscan writer Ilia Delio asks whether the Church is stuck in a “machine” stage of change. (To learn more about these stages, read Father Richard’s description of the “Five M’s”—human, movement, machine, monument, and memory—in Sunday’s meditation.) 

With the rise of modern science, the world machine became the dominant metaphor of the modern era, and the Church adapted its medieval cosmology to the new mechanistic paradigm. . . . Has the Church become mechanistic like so many other world systems? Is it “stuck in a rut,” and if so, can it find its way out of the rut into a new future? Jesus lived with imagination, and he preached with imagination: “Imagine a small mustard seed,” he said. “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you” (Luke 17:6). He aimed to instill imagination in his disciples so they could think the unthinkable and do the incredible. Similarly, it is helpful to imagine the Church in a new way that enkindles us to think the unthinkable and do the incredible. [1]

Delio writes about open systems, like those found in the natural world, as a model for the Church to reconnect with the dynamism of the gospel. Here she writes about her own call as a religious sister to follow where God was leading:

I had come to a point of inner freedom where I knew God was calling me to do new things; thus, I was impelled to step out of the comforts of institutional life and, with another Sister, take the risk of living religious life in a new way. I think the term open system best describes our way of life. We live in a working-class neighborhood in DC and financially support ourselves (we pay taxes); if we don’t work, we don’t eat. We discuss the aims of the community together; we try to share responsibilities for the community as much as possible; we pray and play as community, but we respect the autonomy of each person and the work of the Spirit in each life. . . . An open-systems way of life works best on shared vision and dialogue and least on control and lack of communication. Trust is an essential factor, but trust requires kenosis, emptying oneself of control and power, and making space for the other to enter in. . . . An open-systems community, like the physical world itself, is based on relationships, not roles or duties but bonds of friendship, sisterhood (or brotherhood), respect, charity, forgiveness, and justice. Where these values are active and alive, life evolves toward richer, more creative forms, never losing sight that wholeness—catholicity—is at the heart of it. [2]

____________________________________

I LOVE YOU FOR WHO YOU ARE, not for what you do. Many voices vie for control of your mind, especially when you sit in silence. You must learn to discern what is My voice and what is not. Ask My Spirit to give you this discernment. Many of My children run around in circles, trying to obey the various voices directing their lives. This results in fragmented, frustrating patterns of living. Do not fall into this trap. Walk closely with Me each moment, listening for My directives and enjoying My Companionship. Refuse to let other voices tie you up in knots. My sheep know My voice and follow Me wherever I lead.

EPHESIANS 4:1–6;  
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. ² Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

JOHN 10:4;
When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 130). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

The Five M’s

In The Wisdom Pattern, Father Richard summarizes five stages of change that have taken place historically in religious and cultural institutions. He calls these stages the “Five M’s”: human, movement, machine, monument, and memory. This week we explore these stages as inspiration for spiritual renewal in our faith communities and our lives. 

It seems that many great things in history start with a single human being. If a person says something full of life that names reality well, the message often moves to the second stage of becoming a movement. That’s the period of greatest energy. The church is at its greatest vitality as the “Jesus Movement,” and the institution is merely the vehicle for that movement. The movement stage is always very exciting, creative, and also risky.

It’s risky because God’s movement in history is larger than any denomination, any culture, or any tradition’s ability to verbalize it. We feel out of control in this stage, and yet why would anybody want it to be anything less? Would we respect and love a God that we could control? I don’t think so! Yet we move rather quickly out and beyond the risky movement stage to the machine stage. This is predictable and understandable.

The institutional or machine stage of a movement will necessarily be a less-alive manifestation. This is not bad, although it is always surprising for those who see church as an end in itself, instead of merely a vehicle for the original vision. We need “the less noble” parts of the Body to keep us all growing toward love (1 Corinthians 12:22–24). There is no other way; but when we don’t realize a machine’s limited capacities, we try to make it into something more than it is. We make it a monument, a closed system operating inside of its own, often self-serving, logic. By then, it’s very hard to take risks for God or for gospel values.

Eventually this monument and its maintenance and self-preservation become ends in themselves. It is easy just to step on board and worship at a monument without ever knowing why or longing for God ourselves. At this point, we have jumped over the human and movement stages and have become what authors Mark Gibbs and T. Ralph Morton called “God’s frozen people.” [1] There is no hint of knowing that we are beloved by God and invited to an inner journey. In this state, religion is merely an excuse to remain unconscious, holding on to a memory of something that must once have been a great adventure. Now religion is no longer life itself, but actually a substitute for life or, worse, an avoidance of life. The secret is to know how to keep in touch with the human and movement stages without being naïve about the necessity of some machines and the inevitability of those who love monuments. We must also be honest: all of us love monuments when they are monuments to our human, ourmovement, or our machine.

Rediscovering the “Jesus Movement”

Yesterday’s meditation outlined a pattern of change based on what Father Richard calls the “Five M’s”: human, movement, machine, monument, and memory. Today Father Richard reflects on examples of individuals who were inspired by the “Jesus movement” to transform the “machines and monuments” in their lives.

Sometimes machine and monument people can be recaptured by the vision of the human and the movement. In the CAC’s early years, we were often visited by our friend Frank, who worked for the nuclear test site outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. In fact, Frank headed the operation for a number of years—and then dared, by the grace of the gospel, to call it into question. He even joined me once as we practiced civil disobedience at the test site. I will never forget seeing him walk toward me with a half-worried half-smile on his face. “I have trusted your teaching all these years. Now I have to trust where it has led me,” he said. We stood together as his former employees drove by and gave less-than-flattering gestures to their old boss. I was humbled and awed by such courage and humility. He had let go of his secure monument through an encounter with the man Jesus and the vision of the peace movement.

It’s hard and very rare to call your own job into question. When Jesus called his disciples, he also called them away from their jobs, and their families too (see Matthew 4:22). Of course, jobs and families are not bad things. But Jesus called them to leave their nets, because as long as anyone is tied to job security, there are a lot of things they cannot see and cannot say. This is one of the great recurring disadvantages of clergy earning their salary from the church, and perhaps why Saint Francis did not want us to be ordained priests. We tend to think and say whatever won’t undermine the company or brand.

Father Richard points to St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) as an example of how to make holistic change: 

Francis of Assisi offers us a model of transformation because he did not attack the monuments or machines directly but went out to the edge and did it better. For his inspiration, Francis went back to the original dynamism and nonviolent style of Jesus the man.

Assisi is surrounded by city walls. Inside those walls are the cathedral and the established churches, all of which are good. That’s where Francis first heard the gospel and fell in love with Jesus. But then he quietly went outside the walls and rebuilt some old ruins called San Damiano and the Portiuncula. He wasn’t telling the others they were doing it wrong. He just gently and lovingly tried to do it better. I think that’s true reconstruction. Remember, the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. That might be a perfect motto for all reconstructive work. It does not destroy machines or monuments but reinvigorates them with new energy and form.

Ash Wednesday

CAC faculty member James Finley reflects on Thomas Merton’s teaching about the True Self and the separate (or false) self:

Our true self is a self in communion. It is a self that subsists in God’s eternal love. Likewise, the false self is the self that stands outside this created subsisting communion with God that forms our very identity. As Merton puts it,

When we seem to possess and use our being and natural faculties in a completely autonomous manner, as if our individual ego were the pure source and end of our own acts, then we are in illusion and our acts, however spontaneous they may seem to be, lack spiritual meaning and authenticity. [1]

In our zeal to become the landlords of our own being, we cling to each achievement as a kind of verification of our self-proclaimed reality. We become the center and God somehow recedes to an invisible fringe. Others become real to the extent they become significant others to the designs of our own ego. And in this process the ALL of God dies in us and the sterile nothingness of our desires becomes our God. . . .

Merton makes clear that the self-proclaimed autonomy of the false self is but an illusion. . . .

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love—outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion. [2]

Father Richard Rohr describes further how the false self lives disconnected from God and from what is ultimately real:

Our false self, which we might also call our “small self,” is our launching pad: our body image, our job, our education, our clothes, our money, our car, our sexual identity, our success, and so on. These are the trappings of ego that we all use to get us through an ordinary day. They are a nice enough platform to stand on, but they are largely a projection of our self-image and our attachment to it. None of them will last! When we are able to move beyond our false self—at the right time and in the right way—it will feel precisely as if we have lost nothing. In fact, it will feel like freedom and liberation. When we are connected to the Whole, we no longer need to protect or defend the mere part. We are now connected to something inexhaustible.

To not let go of our false self at the right time and in the right way is precisely what it means to be stuck, trapped, and addicted to ourselves. If all we have at the end of our life is our false self, there will not be much to eternalize. It is essentially transitory. These costumes are all “accidents” largely created by the mental ego. Our false self is what changes, passes, and dies when we die. Only our True Self lives forever. [3]

Author and retreat leader Paula D’Arcy shares an experience she had as part of a workshop with women inmates of a Texas county jail. An opera piece sung by two visiting performers brought a resonant stillness to a noisy room and awakened a sense of the True Self in the people present. Paula writes:

The music pulled us into the brevity of a lifetime; the mistakes we make; our longings for things to be different, to be better; the despair of being without hope; and the pure and the holy. When I turned around to look, I saw that many inmates were overcome by emotion. Something sublime was moving in that room—a sound that directly entered our hearts. . . .

It was as if the enveloping sound was saying to a hidden place in each of us: Something great is alive in you, and something more than this surface reality is intended for your life. Beyond your circumstances lies a different destiny.

It was not just the inmates who were visibly affected, but everyone else who was present as well. Something inexpressible in the music had broken our hearts open. . . .

It wasn’t the first time I had felt this. In the early 1980s, when I was still trying to put the pieces of my life together after the sudden deaths of my husband and daughter in a drunken-driving accident, I felt challenged by everything. In the blink of an eye my conclusions, my worldview, and my image of God were upended. It was an unsettling time. I kept reaching to the mind, searching for ideas and philosophies to guide me. That old way of managing things was very familiar.

Father Richard teaches that the mind and our thoughts are the source of the separate self. As he often says, “The false self is who you think you are. Your thinking does not make it true.” [1] Paula continues:

But the mind could not bring me where I needed to go. It was a long while before I turned in a different direction and began to look within. Eventually I saw that the seeds of a greater journey are waiting in everything and I understood that, when the time is right—when we are finally willing to meet “what is” and stop insisting on our own version of life [RR: which the separate self cannot help but do]—real change and transformation become possible.

It was an important waking-up. My familiar default was to rely on old voices and experiences—on the mind’s many concepts and ideas. Yet the force of love that sustains life is not a concept, and there are not a set of holy conditions to attain. As I opened my heart, love moved through the pain and slowly changed my sight. Things that once seemed fixed and defining were unmasked. When the [opera piece] “Flower Duet” was sung in the jail, it was again an experience of the flame of love.

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Sara Young

WHEN SOMETHING IN YOUR LIFE OR THOUGHTS makes you anxious, come to Me and talk about it. Bring Me your prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, saying, “Thank You, Jesus, for this opportunity to trust You more.” Though the lessons of trust that I send to you come wrapped in difficulties, the benefits far outweigh the cost. Well-developed trust will bring you many blessings, not the least of which is My Peace. I have promised to keep you in perfect Peace to the extent that you trust in Me. The world has it backwards, teaching that peace is the result of having enough money, possessions, insurance, and security systems. My Peace, however, is such an all-encompassing gift that it is independent of all circumstances. Though you lose everything else, if you gain My Peace you are rich indeed.

PHILIPPIANS 4:6; Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done.

ISAIAH 26:3; No one should not imagine that God’s peace will fill their hearts if they are going through life ignoring him. His peace comes to those who fix their minds on him.

2 THESSALONIANS 3:16 NKJV; Now may the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always in every way. The Lord be with you all.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 126). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.