Peace is where you find it, and it is always in the last place that you look for it. When Jesus prayed for his disciples, he never prayed that their trials be removed but that his followers are strengthened to stand up under them, what we call troubled peace. Yeah I know, doesn’t sound very peaceful. It’s a starting point. You can only learn to trust in times of trouble. You can say you trust the parachute, but if you won’t jump you don’t have a real faith. Troubled peace progresses to a rugged peace. We worry. This is practical atheism. Once you accept Jesus is who he says he is, you have more peace. You worry less. Troubled peace is walking through danger knowing Jesus is by your side. Rugged peace worries less, knows that Jesus is Superman, that he can handle it. A next step on the path to maximum joy is what I call “Funny Peace.”
Funny Peace
The newlyweds have the inevitable “first fight.” Finally the wife just bonks the husband on the head with a pillow. The husband is momentarily angry and says something like: “Duh, I guess you’re serious about mowing the grass to 4 inches and not 3.” They look at each other and both break out into spontaneous laughter, and have a pillow fight that evolves into a memory of how they came to be expecting their first child. That could be called a Galatians moment.
Galatians is a book of funny peace, of gaining freedom by seeing what is important. Paul confronts Peter and other Christ followers who have gone organic and only eat “whole foods” as the only stuff Daniel ate from the Bible story. (No wait a minute, that’s wrong. They went Kosher and followed the law, I must have been thinking of somebody else.)
We are free from the law. Paul makes a strong argument to not become slaves to it again. One important piece of it that I want to highlight is the Jewish law is not bad. The law is trivial. Funny peace comes from having your Galatians moment, and releasing what is trivial.
Let me share a Galatians moment of my own. I was watching my son play basketball. He had experienced a really discouraging run of luck. He had been on losing sports teams more than his share of times. He now was doing really well performance wise, and here he was with his team just getting slaughtered---I was considering pulling the fire alarm. Then I had my Galatians moment. Part of the reason I was so vested in his winning is just 10 months earlier, on Christmas morning while opening gifts he got an unwanted present: he had a grand mal seizure. We did not know if he would live or die. We spent Christmas in the emergency room. I won’t bore you with the details of the ten months getting him on a medicine that works and hopefully one day cured. Words cannot express how little I should care about the score of a basketball game in which he can participate, compete, have fun, and occasionally win. Foolish Galatians.
Maximum Joy
Read Galatians 3 and complete study material
Maximum joy comes next.
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