Peace

“MY peace I give unto you.” A gift is not a gift until it is accepted. It is strange that the world at large is attempting to buy with a price that which is given away.

Peace, the great gift, is the one thing which will enable you to enter the kingdom, here and now. No noisy, clamouring mind shall find admittance there. Peace, the great gift awaiting your acknowledgment, will cause the portals of your Garden of Eden to open wide and bring to your remembrance “what­soever things I have said unto you.”

As long as man looks to conditions, he can never know peace. As long as he seeks things he can never have rest; and yet when he arrives at the point of acceptance of his priceless gift he finds all things there-finds everything is there which is necessary to sustain the perfect continuity of peace.

“Seek peace and pursue it, thereby all good shall come unto thee.” “All good” is enough. Why stray longer in the confusion of the circumstance world, clamouring with the midnight and darkness, when peace may be had for the acceptance—a gift. Peace enables you to move in the circumstance world without fear, for it accepts no evil.

“Ten thousand (who believe in evil) shall fall at thy right hand . . .but it shall not come nigh thee.” “My peace I give unto thee . . . let not your heart be troubled.” Does anything matter? “He giveth his beloved rest.” He is giving always of him­self. Only the things that are given to you can you really possess, and only the gift which is accepted can come into your pos­session.

“Peace, be still” to all argument, criticism, condemnation, and fear.If they come at thee in one way they shall flee in ten, for though their name be legion, yet one at peace with God is a majority. “Fear not, I am with thee, and will never leave thee.”

Rest, Beloved. “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom of Heaven” —here and now—another gift for the acceptance. Why worry and fret? “Fret not yourself because of evil.”

No more fighting—” ye do not need to fight. Set yourself and see.” No more struggle to have recourse to your God. Accept the gift of peace and hear the “still small voice” within calling you by your new name: “You are the Prince of Peace.”

When man accepts the gift of peace, by recognizing that it is his birthright, he comes to understand the divine activity of God. He goes quickly to his goal and accomplishes his end instead of fighting the air, and, best of all, he stops the useless struggle of trying to make God do his bidding.

“It is well with thee,” is a statement of fact—not an affirmation— to the conscious­ness that has accepted the gift of peace. It comes as a burst of sunshine through the gloom. Everything in your universe catches the light of peace and is transformed; and yet nothing is changed except your attitude. Whereas before you saw chaos, you now see order. How could it be otherwise if you are living in a God universe? Was there ever a moment’s chaos in the God-created world?

The acceptance of peace causes you to come instantly to the knowledge that chaos is only brought about by your distracted vision or your pygmy intellect, imagining that by beseeching God you can cause him to change his changeless laws to suit your whims. When you come to the acceptance of the gift of peace, you seek to change nothing, because you find nothing that needs changing, except your attitude; and so you rest in peace and quietude—” it is well with thee.”

The Prince of Peace is walking in the garden. Your universe is the Garden of Eden which you lost sight of when you judged from appearances and tasted the fruit of a dual power. But now the velvety Silence has reclaimed you and sent the light. He sends the light impersonally to the world, free to all, and many do not accept it—he who accepts it, suddenly, as if by magic, sees the ugly world melt away before him. The world which he considers a hard school of bitter experience changes into a garden, by the magic of peace.

You walk in the garden and bathe in the clear crystalline pool of forgetfulness. “The former things have passed away and shall not come into mind nor be remembered any more. “How could anything that caused you pain be remembered after you have accepted the gift?

“The peace that passeth all understand­ing” is enfolding you. No one who does not see the singleness of good can under­stand. He will continue to see chaos and war where you see order and peace; and yet to all appearances you are in the same world, but through the recognition you have come to live, move, and breathe in a world within a world—a world that is invisible to the man who is yet working with evil.

The glorious activity of your soul stirs you. The Voice of your Risen Lord says “This is the way ; walk thou in it. Follow thou me. It is well with thee. Peace be unto thee. Peace be unto thy house. Peace be unto thy universe. Let not your heart be troubled.”

“Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.” To have the mind stayed on “Thee” is not only to recognize the single idea of good, but to dwell in the throbbing, glowing presence of life itself.

You may go in and come out and find pastures. You may travel the open road. “Peace, like a river around thee shall flow.” Thou shalt travel the way of peace, through green pastures of contentment and beside calm waters of quietude, and thou shalt enter the courts of the Lord and it shall be well with thee.

“He that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the Churches (your consciousness)

“The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.”

 

Walter C. Lanyon