Deep in the middle of the Covid winter, I found myself turning to a familiar passage, Philippians 4:6-7:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Like so many of us have been during this difficult time, I had been feeling anxious, and felt drawn to spend more time with these verses. This time, something new struck me. I have always read this and put the primary burden of achieving peace on myself. Do I feel anxious? Then it’s my job to pray and petition, to be grateful, to ask God, and that is what will unlock peace. Or even if the thought wasn’t always that crystalized, there was still a vague underlying sense that I must not be doing it right if I didn’t feel peaceful at the end. But when I read it again this time, I noticed something. Yes, we are asked to pray. Yes, we are called to bring our anxieties into the presence of God. Yes, we are encouraged to be thankful even as we do so. But the bearer of peace is always God. God’s peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This isn’t even a promise that we will necessarily feel peaceful. We may not even always feel aware that God’s peace is protecting us in this way.
I love this image of peace as an active protector, as something outside of ourselves. Of course it is lovely to feel inner, emotional peace. It is such a gift when the feeling of anxiety quiets, and peace descends. But something I have learned about anxiety is that it is a convincing liar. It routinely gives us a false narrative of events. Anxiety causes us to feel deeply unsafe, even when we are perfectly safe. Part of learning to cope with and dispel anxiety is to learn to recognize its false narratives and calmly replace them with true ones until we start to believe them. The beauty of these verses is that they allow for that. Even while our fears and anxieties threaten to overwhelm us, even as they cloud our picture of our lives and the world around us, God’s peace is still protecting our hearts and minds, sheltering us in Christ’s very self, the most secure place possible. We are held safe until the whirl clears and we are able to recognize that we are surrounded by God’s peace, which is really more of a deep rightness and wholeness than just an emotion. I wonder if this is what is meant by God’s peace transcending our understanding.
Instead of placing the burden of the work on ourselves, we can place it on God. We cast our burdens on God, not expecting that to allow us to achieve peace by our own effort, but trusting that we will be enfolded in God’s peace regardless of how we feel. The effort we’re asked to give is not a series of tasks we need to accomplish in order to earn peace. Instead, they are tools that draw us into the loving presence of God, that help us to rebuke our anxiety with gratitude, and to remember that we are already held safe in a way that transcends our ability to understand.
Wellspring 