How can I find peace this Christmas?

Here I am “Googling,” a nonsensical word that would have inspired laughs and guffaws 10 years ago. Today, it’s a part of our eeryday lexicon, a verb and a noun all in one.

I ask the ghost in the machine the question.  It takes Google all of .39 seconds to find more than 860 million results.  That won’t do me much good.

“Narrow your search to get more accurate results” the help   button suggests.

“How can I find peace this Christmas?” I ask. After all, the carolers are reminding us, “peace on earth, good will toward man.”

That more specific search  took .38 seconds to find 96 million results. That’s not much better. Can peace be found with a simple Internet search? It isn’t like trying to find a way to remove rust deposits in the bathroom, or how to bake high-altitude brownies.

Peace  is something that has eluded the Ancients and haunted the moderns. Mystics have thought about, poets have pined for it and scholars have studied it.

Some have sought it in a bottle or a pill. Some have tried to hunt it down with a relationship – or two or three. Some have turned to the religion of man, or a man of religion.

Searching for peace has pushed men to the mountaintop, to the jungle, and to the ocean. It’s a quest that has gone on since the dawn of time. How can something so simple be so elusive?

And here I am, typing, asking an algorithm for the answer.

 It’s silly, really. There is really no short cut for contemplation. Information will not substitute for the long-suffering search that is often done is silence. And loneliness. And fear.

And so did I.

 But deep in the soul, there’s a Voice. It’s beyond decibels, ringing out in unquenchable silence that rattles the heart. “He turned to me, and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit, out of the mud and mire.”

And it wasn’t just a salvation, it was a restoration.

 “He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth,    a hymn of praise to our God.

 ———–

 I don’t know how you got here. It wasn’t  by accident. I’ve been where you are, looking for peace in all the wrong places.. Maybe you looked to Google and stumbled here. Maybe you  need a friend to help you find it. Drop me a note and we can talk .