I keep making the mistake of thinking that peace means being in control. That’s just not right. In fact, for most things in life, control is an illusion. We can control very little when you get right down to it. There are things we can influence, but very few we can control.<\/p>\n

Exercise and diet can influence our health but don’t completely control it. We can do nothing about heredity and very little about disease process.<\/p>\n

We have great influence over our children, especially when they are young. As they age our control dwindles and eventually disappears.<\/p>\n

Things like the weather, the economy and politics are completely out of control, ours or, it seems, anyone else’s.<\/p>\n

Even things like our calendar and to-do list seem to have either minds of their own or the minds of others.<\/p>\n

The great paradox about peace is that it is really only attainable when we let go of control and place everything in hands of the only one who really has any control, God. \u00a0That sounds very simple, but it’s really tough to do. It’s both a decision and a process. After years of trying, we have to come to realize\u00a0that we really can’t control much if anything. We then decide to put it in God’s hands, but we keep wanting to take it back. It’s only through years of experience and learning how much better He is at control than we are, that we can arrive at some semblance of peace.<\/p>\n

When Jesus said, “Peace be with you,” He was only in one sense speaking of a state of mind. He was also saying, “Here I am. At last peace is possible.” Peace isn’t the absence of trouble, or the existence of control. It’s the presence of Christ.<\/p>\n

Peace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep making the mistake of thinking that peace means being in control. That’s just not right. In fact, for most things in life, control is an illusion. We can control very little when you get right down to it. There are things we can influence, but very few we can control. Exercise and diet can influence our health but don’t completely control it. We can do nothing about heredity and very little about disease process. We have great influence over our children, especially when they are young. As they age our control dwindles and eventually disappears. Things like the weather, the economy and politics are completely out of control, ours or, it seems, anyone else’s. Even things like our calendar and to-do list seem to have either minds of their own or the minds of others. The great paradox about peace is that it is really only attainable when we let go of control and place everything in hands of the only one who really has any control, God. \u00a0That sounds very simple, but it’s really tough to do. It’s both a decision and a process. After years of trying, we have to come to realize\u00a0that we really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"chat","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-chat","hentry","category-the-spiritual","post_format-post-format-chat"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8851,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8850\/revisions\/8851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}