A Prayer for Peace

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
— John 14:27

The mind has a way of running ahead of us — racing through every worst-case, every what-if, every door we forgot to lock and conversation we wish we'd handled differently. The worry takes on a life of its own, especially at night, especially alone. And we know, somewhere underneath it all, that the spinning isn't helping. But knowing that and stopping it are two very different things. The only thing I've found that slows it down is handing the whole tangled mess to someone bigger than the mess.

Lord, my heart will not be still.
I have tried to talk myself into peace, and I can't get there on my own.
So I am bringing the worry to you — all of it, the reasonable and the ridiculous — and asking you to hold it.
Quiet the spinning. Still the what-ifs.
Give me your peace, the kind the world can't give and the world can't take. The kind that doesn't make sense and doesn't have to.
Let me rest in it tonight.
Amen.

The peace he's talking about isn't the absence of trouble. If it were, none of us would ever find it. It's a peace that sits right in the middle of the trouble and stays — like a stone at the bottom of a moving stream. The water goes on rushing, but the stone holds. That's the peace he leaves with us. Not a peace that removes the hard thing, but one that keeps us while the hard thing does its work.

Keep this one where the worry lives — on the nightstand, in the phone, wherever the mind starts spinning. Ruby writes a short devotional every morning in the same spirit: a verse, and a few steady words for the day. You can subscribe — it's free, or stay a while and read more of her writing.