Is it harder now to find places to sense peace, to be conscious of Christmas?

Most things we do feel like a production, a scurrying, a hurried and hectic undertaking.

I spoke a little too sternly yesterday about all the noise driving me crazy. Another person said they were getting “addled” and I was thrilled to know someone was likeminded.

She quickly told me though, not nearly so much as you.

Yes, I know.

I knew.

Others just waited for the noise to settle down as if they all were resting in a bubble of peace, a comfortable and softly draped wrap of serene.

This week of Advent, the preparation for the birth of Jesus, asks me to consider peace.

On Saturday morning, I stood close to the edge of wooden dock on a misty cold marsh. Large oaks all around and their branches fat from age and layered with growth of bright green fern.

I considered and am still, could this be my church? Is this place and sometimes others I find, the place I am made to worship God?

I assure you it feels quite so.

Free of busy and business, just me and sometimes one or two others approaching whole body and soul a place we are called to by our longings?

A congregation consisting of white birds trying to avoid our cameras and a wide, wide sky?

I’m sure that’s not God’s desire, a solitary island dweller, he didn’t design me to be.

But, oh how at peace I am in the places I get alone with quiet and Him.

To notice God.

I’m different, I suppose, craving quiet and being made anxious by disorder.

He is my peace.

Not my surroundings nor those in my midst.

He himself is my peace.

I’m reminded in the quiet.

Peace that can’t be manufactured, demanded or insisted upon; but, that emanates from within me keeping me calm when all around is so very uncalm.

That’s the call to Christmas, the call to seek peace, surround ourselves in it and get immersed again in the story of the starry night, the Holy Night when peace was born.

“Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth”

The weary me, the weary world rejoices.

Night, divine. A night divine.

The night, the day, the moment divine when peace came near, made itself clearly known.

Still does, I call it ” noticing God”.

“In sin and error pining, until He appeared

and the soul felt its worth.”

O’ Holy Night.

Oh, to be seen as one with worth because of the Holy night, the Holy one, not at all because of what I do or anything I’ve done.

It’s been a tough couple of days with shifts and situations gone awry.

Not sure why things happen, wonder what might could have made it different.

Things that made, make no sense.

I bolted from church last night, it had become too noisy, too busy, too much a feeling like a clamoring for what might make one feel worthy.

I drove under the starry sky back home like escaping.

And I rested once home and woke this morning to read about peace, this week’s Advent focus.

Found myself peaceful, again. It was a welcome, I assure you, to come back to a place of peace.

A friend heard I’d never read a special book at Christmas and so she gifted me last week.

I’m grateful for her deciding to send it my way, gifting me in an intentional way.

I love her for it.

I broke my rule this morning about pencil marks on pages and I underlined and circled the words that spoke peace to me, made me more conscious of Christmas.

More understanding of peace

More conscious of Christmas.

And peace because of Christ.

So, if you’re alive today, sing redemption’s song.

Louie Giglio

Sing your song.

Do your dance, your quiet sway of peace.

I know I’ll do mine.