More Peace
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in your faith, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, your whole life and outlook may be radiant with hope.”
Romans 15:13, Phillips
It’s the time of year in Student Ministries where we begin the more formal process for preparing students for their upcoming Confirmations. I’ve been meeting students to find out where they are in their faith, how they encounter God, and what questions they have about the Christian faith and being an Episcopalian.
Every year, there are some young men and women in our church who astonish me, breathing life into the world-wearier parts of my faith and work, which as a priest are so often (albeit not helpfully!) intertwined.
One of the questions we like to ask is, “What do you want to get out of this period of Confirmation instruction?”
One student replied, “I want to know more peace, like the peace I feel when I leave church after Communion on a Sunday morning.”
We talked a little about how God meets with us, and that this unspeakable, deep, inexplicable peace is one of the ways we can so often know that God is with us. It’s God’s presence alone that can break into our world, our busyness, our ambition for ourselves and our families and breathe the life-giving space that we all need to have Godly hope in every aspect of our lives.
I wasn’t taught about the Holy Spirit at all in my tiny church growing up – but as a teenager I often had those encounters on a Sunday morning where the world melted away as I looked at the stained-glass window above the Altar and just rested in, as I now understand was(!), the presence of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.
When a preacher finally explained this to me, it was wonderful to finally have an explanation for this sensation I had know my entire childhood!
My prayer for you as you read today is that you would know the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. If you’re wanting to invite God to meet with you and know this peace, the words of the wonderful hymn, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” can be a great way to pray and ask God for this.
"Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace."
(John Greenleaf Whitter, “Hymnal 1982,” 652 and 653)
