Peace

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John 14:27 - (ESV): "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."


My mind races with the consequences of my actions every moment of my waking life it seems.  For example, 2 months ago, I hit a car in a parking lot.  At the time, I was not sure I hit it.  I looked, it did not appear damaged, so i parked 10 feet from the car, and waited for my wife to do her business within the building I was parked in front of.  She came out and told me to drive next door to pick her up.  On the way out, just to make sure I did not hit the car, and if I did hit it, I did not damage it, I looked again.  Seemed whole to me.  I pulled out of the parking lot, turned left, saw why wife, pulled to the side of the road, picked her up, and spent the next 45 minutes going from business to business for her within the same town.


Then, as I was entering the Geo Tag in facebook, for the business she was then inside of, a local police officer scared the tar out of me by sticking his head in the van's window.  You gotta know that this was a 15 passenger van, and was very tall, so his head actually was right in front of mine, face to face.  He then told me we had a problem.  Since I was still thinking about the near miss I had in the parking lot, when he told me that I had hit the car, I said "Oh Crap  --  I did hit it?"

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He flipped out. Reminded me of a DI. Screaming, pointing, being rude, calling my wife a Girl, refusing to accept the registration which in CT in on the windshield, refusing the insurance card at first, never letting me tell him what happened.  He just went nuts.


Since then I have been told that he was probably not used to people telling him the truth, so he just assumed I had hit the car and left the area.  He was told that I had hit the car, sped away, picking my wife up on the side of the road, and beat feet to get out of the area.  No one told him I had been there for 10 minutes after I evidently did hit the car.  It did not occur to him that I was still within a mile of the store where this happened 45 minutes later. 


Rather, in his rush to PROVE that I was an idiot, he wrote on the report that there was food wrapping trash from the store I was parked at when all this happened.  There was trash on the floor, for sure, but not from there.  We don't eat there.  It makes me ill.  In addition, my wife and spent 10 minutes talking to friends inside the store, and they have volunteered to tell the law that we did not buy any food.  Further, I have the Geo Tags which are time stamped to show how long I was there.  No one fled the scene.  10 minutes I was parked within 10 feet, and there were only 2 or 3 cars in the parking lot.


He never asked.  He just assumed I was a bad guy.  After I got the citation, he finally asked why I left.  I said, "If I remember -- "  He yelled, "What do you mean, if I remember, it only happened 30 minutes ago?"  I apologized, and said, "I have a brain injury, and I ...." He yelled, "I don't care."  I lost it.  I walked into his personal space, put my face inches from his face, and said, "Excuse me?"  The reason I told him I have a brain injury is because I have VERY poor short term memory.  I only remember emotional things, and those poorly.  This one I wrote down.


Why is this important?  Because I failed the Lord.  I know I did not do much wrong.  I should have called the police, even though I could find no damage, or was even sure I hit that car.  I should have looked more carefully.  I did not, I am not at peace because of it.  I am afraid of the court date too. Why?  Because the officers report was horrible.  His vision of what happened is all one sided.  Makes me look very bad.  I could have prevented that, if I just remembered who this life is all about.  I abandoned the peace of the Lord and tried to do it on my own.


The problem only escalates for TBI patients though.  Now, since I can not really remember what happened, only what I tell people happened, and fear rules my day, I see myself in prison for 15 years.  Not possible, but that is the nature of my illness.


So why don't I have the peace of the Lord?  Am I not forgiven?


Perhaps my conservative friends are right, and the Lord is punishing me for my loss of control.  You know, Forgiven but still responsible.  I don't buy that, but that is running around in my head.


Perhaps God just does not care about me right now.  I don't buy that either, but obviously I have thought it.

But then I ran across this verse.  "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."

Jesus, as he was dying, left us a gift far bigger than I at first understood.


He left us Peace, and not just any Peace, His Peace.  


Wow.


Jesus did not leave it there, just in case I misunderstood.  He said, Not the world's peace - you know, the forgive but don't forget type, but His peace.


And just to make sure I did not miss the point, he tells me to not be troubled or afraid.


So why was I troubled and afraid when I started writing this?  
Because I allowed the world's peace to be my guide.


Why am I sitting up straighter and breathing slowly right now, without the fear or trouble?
Because I accepted this gift too.  Right here.  Right now.


Read the Bible, listen to Holy Spirit within you, and be at peace.  It is your new birth right.  Own it.

So, How Sweet is It?

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I was out running today, or I should say jogging, just faster than a walk, listening to my MP3 player built into my Blackberry phone.  In the background I was running a GPS tracking program called Runtastic, so I know if I improve, and I can tell my wife where to pick me up when I get lost. (smile here)

Anyway, at about 40 minutes into my run I was listening to a version of Amazing Grace by Bill Anderson, and half way through the song, he had a message. (Click the Play Button below if you want to hear the version I was listening to.

 Amazing Grace by Bill Anderson

Before I explain the BGO, (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious), that hit me like when Pythagoras exclaimed "Eureka" upon discovering Pythagoras' Theorem on the right triangle.

I run listening to up to 30 versions of Amazing Grace playing in my ears.  This is direct result of a suggestion that one of my friends made to me 20 years or more ago.  He said he ran with his dog, and listened for God.  I tried that.  I never heard God. Some would say I needed to listen longer, but I always turned my listening, at about 5 minutes, into talking to God, rather than listening, since ADHD is not an affliction with me, but rather a life style.  So, rather than spending 60 minutes telling God how bad my day is, or what I want or need, I decided to tell him how awesome he is.

What is the most awesome thing that God has done or me?  Amazing Grace. So, since I need to keep on track or get lost on the way, I decided to sing along with the many versions of Amazing Grace I have on my player.  It takes between 12 and 18 versions for me to run about 60 minutes.  So that is what I do.  I run and give praise and thanks while I do it.

Now that really is Amazing
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Generally speaking, my life is pretty amazing. (See Diving In, if you want to know what I mean by amazing.)  Though, amazing as it is, we have our moments, and this week is all about the moments.

The back end of our vehicle blows up, and we don't have the money to repair it. We need to be somewhere else helping other people, but we are stuck away from home waiting for the repair to finish.  My daughter comes home from Washington state, after visiting my sister and climbing Mt Rainier, and we can not pick her up at the air port. Her car is parked at our house, not hers, and we have the keys. There is more, but that is enough, if you get my drift.

The phrase we threw at each other was,  "we can't catch a break."  That is what was in my mind as I started running.  Not very amazing, but based on yesterday, the broken vehicle, and tomorrow, all that other stuff, I was pretty stressed and regretful.

Blinding Light
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Back to the BGO.  Bill Anderson broke down a way to look at grace that had not occurred to me in his context.  It took my breath away.  He quoted Matthew 6:34 (AMP) "So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble."

He went on to say that God provides us with enough grace to live this day.  "He does not provide enough for yesterday or for tomorrow.  That is why, if we live in the past we live with regrets and if we live in tomorrow, we live with stress."

I had always looked at grace as referring to Salvation alone, a spiritual thing only, not connected with the world.  Yet, the Bible is a whole, not disconnected verses.  Grace itself means unmerited favor. It had never occurred to me that living through today's problems was a benefit of Grace, and even in my daily life, unmerited favor was a promise of God. Wow.

I fall victim to this issue, sin if you will, nearly everyday.  I live for tomorrow tempered by yesterday.  It is a function of the way I was trained to solve problems in physics.  I don't know how to do it any other way.

But the BGO was this. It requires effort to live in the moment.  I know that there is enough grace for right now. I need to remind myself to live in the right now.

Amazing.  Grace.  How sweet it is.