It's there for the seeking

   Peace is out there.  It's available.  It's a real thing. But it's not something you just fall into or are handed on a silver platter.  It takes seeking, searching out.  It's progressive, but in the seeking there is finding not only peace but the promises that come with those who seek peace- a  Future.
   We reward people for DOING something: you get paid for the hours you work, you reward your kids with a family ice cream party when they finish a school book or grade in school, you give them a treat when they finish cleaning their rooms, etc.  The reward is tied to the accomplishment - pursuing something to its end goal.  However, if you got the reward for nothing, given money regularly without working for it, it would lose its value. We don't tend to utilize well or appreciate things received lightly, easily.  We take them for granted, thereby bypassing the true blessing of that reward and squandering it.
   I think that's why we have to seek out peace and any good thing, to appreciate it and utilize it well.  If we are given something before it's time, before we've sought it out, wrestled for it, we could end up like Israel: obtaining what we want be in exchange having leanness of soul\.  It would end up taking from us much more than it gave and the very thing we wanted would destroy us because we're not ready to carry the weight and responsibility of it.
  What if King George had walked away from America, had given the land to the colonists without a fight - they had a peaceable transition of power?  Would we as a fledgling nation have been able to formulate such a solid government structure, known what we wanted and didn't want and wrestled over big ideas that changed a world if we had obtained it lightly? Would we have appreciated peace, had we not wartime first?
   Sometimes in the midst of seeking, of desperately needing it and wanting it, it's hard not to be resentful when peace or that thing we are seeking seems so intangible, so far away.  I'm reminding myself that there's a purpose in the seeking, there's a growth, a deeper level of understanding and need and will be a deeper appreciation and experience of the many facets of peace as it is revealed and walked out.  Not that life is absent of it or that there aren't great blessings of supernatural peace in difficult situations along the way, but I want to learn to walk in it 24-7, unshaken, unshakable.
  Isaac Newton new what it meant to have to fight for everything he wanted or pursued in life and wrote this hymn out of the struggle. His story Story of Isaac Watts


Beautiful rendition of song
Am I a Soldier of the Cross

1 Am I a soldier of the cross,
a foll'wer of the Lamb?
And shall I fear to own His cause
or blush to speak His Name?

2 Must I be carried to the skies
on flow'ry beds of ease,
while others fought to win the prize
and sailed through bloody seas?

3 Are there no foes for me to face?
Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace
to help me on to God?

4 Sure I must fight, if I would reign;
increase my courage, Lord;
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
supported by Thy Word.

5 Thy saints in all this glorious war
shall conquer, though they die;
they see the triumph from afar
by faith's discerning eye.

6 When that illustrious day shall rise,
and all Thine armies shine
in robes of vict'ry through the skies,
the glory shall be Thine.