RELIGIOUS LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 23948, 14 October 1939, Page 17

RELIGIOUS LIFE

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ICHTHUS]

“IN HIS WILL IS OUR PEACE”

Where is peace to be found? As I walked home across the paddocks tonight after making my final round of the ewes, this is what I asked myself. Some few find it, and to them it is the pearl of great price. So many miss it. Many long for it, but fail to find it. The world has lost it—if it ever had it. So I mused as I walked quietly homewards. The scene about me was one of pastoral quiet and loveliness. In the soft evening light the close-cropped fields had the appearance of well-kept lawns,’ on which the young lambs leaped or ran in troops. The hedges had put on their spring garment of soft young green. Presently, over the hill I made out the first star shining in the quiet sky. It all seemed too good to be possible in a world that is once again at war. The contrast between this peaceful loveliness and that ghastly horror with its anxiety and tension, was painfully acute. It was as I pondered over this sharp contrast that a remembered sentence from the Bible shaped itself in my mind: “In His will is our peace. THE BOON OF PEACE

It is, of course, true that we cannot ever contemplate peace at any price. The price to be paid may be the destruction of the very bases of peace itself. The slave has peace—of a kind—but'then he is a slave. And so long as his soul within him is alive how can a slave ever know peace? But such thoughts serve only to reveal how great a boon peace, when it is real peace, is. It is part of our nature to struggle against difficulties and to contend with obstacles; but the aim of our striving is peace. Moreover, we cannot plan wisely, nor continue in strength, nor, for that matter, in health of body, mind, or spirit without inward serenity: which, I suppose, is another name for peace. Nor, for my own part, can I conceive of happiness in which such peace is not an element. Peace —which is something other than stagnation or mere negative indifference —seems, to belong to the very nature of the ideal which is the goal of all our striving. I think, too, that we all feel that however real and of true worth the necessity to labour and to strive may be, yet, somehow, peace is our rightful heritage. It is a boon which even in the midst of necessary toil and struggle we ought to enjoy. It is true that we can. never be our best selves without labour and striving; but it is also true that we can never be our best selves unless we know and possess peace. I am not trying to build up an argument, or to establish a case. I am just setting down “the thoughts that arose in me” as I walked in the midst of that quiet and lovely evening peace, and _ mused. Surely peace is a part of “our life’s unalterable good,” of the boon that life was meant to be. Somehow, somewhere, we ought each to achieve-it.

PEACE AMID STORM AND STRAIN I came into the house and sat down to supper. But these thoughts had not finished with me: I suppose, because I had not finished with them. One must think to a conclusion, as I once heard a speaker say. Sitting by the fire later, when the house was still, I followed on where I was being led. It occurred to me then that peace and struggle are not necessarily opposites; that it is possible to be at peace in the midst of struggle and storm. Sailors tell us, and I believe the scientific weathermen back them up, that at the centre of a cyclone there is an area of perfect calm. Perhaps it is so with the Universe, too. I believe that it is. Not only so, but we may be playing a full part in the struggle, and still carry the centre of calm within us. And, as we have already seen, such men are the wisest in counsel, the strongest in action, the unconquerable in endurance. In the midst of the terrific strain of his work at the Foreign Office in the Great War Sir Edward Grey would spend some hours on the roof at night watching the placid stars, or take a swift few hours’ journey into the country to see the leaves of the beech trees he loved turn colour. Needless to say, he came back to the strain of his labour marvellously revived and adequate. It

were well for us, surely, if we could arrive at the secret of carrying our peace with us into the midst of the strain of our days of storm, and struggle, and sorrow. It is just there that peace is most needed, and it is there that she has her perfect work, PEACE LIES WITHIN Does not another truth regarding this great matter come to light here? . If we are to find the secret of peace it is useless to look for it outside ourselves in the conditions around us. These conditions may be as peaceful and lovely as I found them tonight. In that case, their peace may fall like a benediction upon the troubled heart. But, of course, we may also, because of the turmoil within, pass through the very midst of it with unseeing eyes. In any case, not there does the secret of peace lie. Or the outward scene may be as it is in Poland tonight, and there is no peace for the heart in that If we are to find peace we must find it within ourselves. Not till then is our problem solved, and the great gift given. This is convincingly put by David Grayson in a fine passage in “Adventures in Contentment”: “I did not want to feel or to think: I merely wanted to live. In the sun or the rain I wanted to go out and come in, and never again know the pain of the unquiet spirit. I looked forward to an awakening not without dread, for we are as helpless before birth as in the presence of death. But like all birth, it came, at last, suddenly. All that summer I had worked in a sort of animal content. Autumn had now come, late autumn, with coolness in the evening air. I was ploughing in my upper field—not then mine, in fact—and it was a soft afternoon with the earth turning up moist and fragrant. I had been walking the furrows all day long. I had taken note, as though my life depended upon it, of the occasional stones or roots in my field, I made sure of the adjustments of the harness. I drove with peculiar care to save the horses. With such simple details of the work in hand I had found it my joy to occupy my mind. Up to that moment the most important things in the world had seemed a straight furrow and well-turned corners—to me, then a profound accomplishment. I cannot well describe it, save by the analogy of an opening door somewhere within the house of my consciousness. I had been in the dark: I seemed to emerge. I had been bound down: I seemed to leap up—and with a marvellous sudden sense of freedom and joy. “I stopped there in my field and looked up. And it was as if I had never looked up before. I discovered another world. It had been there before, for long and long, but I had never seen nor felt it. All discoveries are made in that way: a man finds the new thing, not in nature, but in himself.” DISCOVERY AND ACCEPTANCE David Grayson is beyond question right. Peace is a discovery. It is the opening of a door in the house of our consciousness. We became suddenly aware of a new world. It had been there before, for long and long, but we had never seen it. We had been in the dark: we seemed to emerge. We had been bound down: we seemed to leap up—and with a marvellous sudden sense of freedom and joy. Yes, it is a discovery: it is the discovery of God in the midst of His world, and the discovery of His world in the midst of the world we have known.

Is it not also acceptance?—the laying down of our own will and hopes, and fire acceptance of the Great Will that rules the world and life and all things. Such a submission brings into the long discordance, and into our divided mind, a sudden and wonderful harmony. We lay down our arms, and suddenly, marvellously, we find that peace has come and we are born into a new and glorious world. The fire had burned low. I turned out the light, and went out to look at the quiet stars shining serenely above the unrest of man and what he has made of the Creator’s gift of life. Then I came in and went to bed with a quiet heart. “In His will is our peace.”