Feeling Boxed In?

Do you find yourself being influenced by the chaos in the world? As hard as you try, the lack of calm around you ends up getting “in” you, creeping into your mind and soul. Or maybe, let me describe it this way. You feel boxed in. Every place you look, mayhem. And no matter how thick your walls are, built to keep the world’s madness out, it always seems to find that one little crack and wiggles its way in. Both of those scenarios are true for me. How about you?     

Due to my stroke, my brain has a hard time categorizing and processing the activity around me. So, just like the two previous scenarios, external stimuli, even small amounts, tends to create immense chaos in my brain. In those moments, I do not experience peace. In fact, quite the opposite, leaving me feeling trapped, boxed in.

And let’s be honest, sometimes we create our own chaos, our own restlessness, our own turmoil. We run after one thing and then another, looking for calm and peace and contentment. However, that calm, that peace, that contentment, it is only fleeting. We then look elsewhere, only to have the same result.

Maybe today, you feel boxed in by the chaos both in you and around you. No matter what remedy you try, some good, some not so good, you just cannot quiet your soul, calm your spirit, slow down your mind. It soon becomes easy to stop trying to search for peace. Maybe it just isn’t attainable.

Then again, maybe it is! We just need to look in the right place.

On the night before He was crucified, Jesus delivers what is known as the Farewell Address (John Chapters 14-17) to the remaining eleven disciples. Early in that address (14:1-11), Jesus tells the eleven that he will going away to the Father, which I am sure created quite a bit of inner turmoil within each of them.

Immediately after dropping that bombshell, Jesus then tells his guys that he will be sending the Holy Spirit to guide them (14:15-26). But Jesus goes even further in trying to calm their inner turmoil, their inner unrest. Here is what we find in v.27 – “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Those comforting words are bookends to the is entire section, as Jesus began his address in a similar fashion – “Let your hearts not be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (14:1).

God offers us a calming peace. God’s peace is not dependent upon what is or is not around us. God’s peace is internal, not external. He offers peace that flows like a river. Picture a continually flowing river that brings a perpetual source of nutrients, abundance, and freshness to the land around it. We see these words in Isaiah 66:12 – “For this is what the LORD says: I will make peace flow to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flood; you will nurse and be carried on her hip and bounced on her lap.”  

God’s peace allows you and me to live, not feeling boxed in by the world’s chaos, but rather, to live peacefully and productivity amid our busy, chaotic, frantic, and frenzied world.

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