The Peach of Christ

I realy don't like trusting the Lord. This was my conclusion as I headed to Church on my bike on Sunday morning. My heart was heavy, the news as of late hasn't been good. 6000 people to be laid off at Telsus , people I know from CJUG out of work, I've just come home from a tough assignment in Toronto, thinking I was getting a long term assignment, to find out the big project had been canned, but I could help on a short term project to mid August. So I was thinking, planing to blog, about how I don't like trusting the Lord. I know that security is an illusion, and that we only have security in him, but right then I didn't feel loved, or cared about, I just felt anxious.

The sermon at Church was on Prayer, the story was from Acts chapter 12, about how the Church prayed when Peter was in prison and how he was released. My mood was so black that I couldn't help noting that story begins with the wonderful news

About that time King Herod Agrippa began to persecute some believers in the church. He had the apostle James (John's brother) killed with a sword.

Obviously St. Luke never spent time in the Marketing Department. So we can pray and great things can happen, or we can pray and die by the sword. This was only confirming my line of thinking that morning. Lynn (one of our pastors) continued, talked some more about prayer and asked that someone read a section out of Philippians 4. So having a voice that carries, that's what people say, me I just think I'm loud, I started to read.

Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peach will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

As I read this I couldn't belive what I was reading. As I read I was filled with the sense that God was speaking to me, through my reading this passage. He broke through my cynisim. God wasn't promising that we wouldn't face the sword, or that we would always get set free, he was promising his peach to guard our hearts. (ok the peach was a typo that Chris or Lynn made, must send them a link to Bible Gateway) In the time it took me to read those few words, my entire attitude changed. My prospects haven't changed, I just found out today that a woman I've had a great working relationship with was laid off. But try as I might there is a sense of Joy and Peach that I just can't shake. Evidence, I keep coming back to the peach thing. :)

-Peach

PS to the cynics both Christian and otherwise, I know this subjective stuff doesn't prove anything, but it a record of my experience. I know I could dismiss it as an emotional reaction to random events, and yet that is not how I experienced it. I also know you can reduce anything, including existence to random events, or as Douglas Adams puts it "What ever happens, happens". While I don't base what I believe, simply on subjective experience, it is what brings my faith alive.