Sometimes all of life feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You can feel like, in almost any arena of our existence, that you are moving from one crisis to another:

• Personally, you might have had a yearly physical but as you age, there are more and more tests to run. It can begin to feel like that you’re just waiting year after year for the inevitable diagnosis that’s going to come your way.
• At home, your marriage and your children might be in a good place right now, but you’re just waiting for someone in your home to start making bad choices. So year after year, you do all you can to just get through hoping for one more year when everything’s okay.
• In the world, especially right now, it can feel like it’s just a matter of time. Just a matter of time for another incident. Another riot. Another crisis. Another recession. All you can do is hope that whatever that next thing is, it stays “over there.”

We might hear messages of peace from our family, friends, workplaces, and even our national and world leaders – promises that things are not heated up and that we’re living in a time without battles, but we know better. We know that with all these things we’re really just waiting for the next tragedy. The next crisis. The next heartbreak. Peace, for us, seems like the carrot at the end of the stick that’s always two steps out of reach.

The promise of peace is a precarious one at best. Why might that be?

It’s because in all these situations, the promise of peace is built on shifting sands. World leaders change, and with them so do policies. We can’t control which cells inside our bodies are morphing and changing into something dangerous. Even our closest relationships in our homes are influenced by things outside of our control. We live in an exhausting cycle between peace and war, between conflict and temporary resolution, between anxiety and rest. There is no peace because there no firm basis for that peace to be built upon.

Except when there is.

So beautiful are these words from the Apostle Paul:

He Himself is our peace… (Eph. 2:14).

Jesus doesn’t just bring peace between God and men and consequently between man and man; He Himself is our peace. The foundation for this peace is the only thing in the universe that we can ultimately and eternally count on as rock solid – Jesus Himself. How glorious to know, today, that He doesn’t just bring peace that will last for a few minutes until something else comes along to disrupt it, but that He Himself is our peace.