The World of God Within Us

 

Dear Reader,

This morning a friend sent me a quotation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us.”

There is much around us that speaks of God. We see Him in the morning light, in the quiet of the trees, in the movement of the sea, in the vastness of the sky, and in the small mercies that still visit ordinary days. Creation has a way of reminding us that life is more than routine and that the world still carries traces of divine beauty.

Yet Longfellow suggests something deeper: that as glorious as God’s creation is around us, there is a greater glory to be found within us.

I reflect further!

It is one thing to admire beauty in the world. It is another thing to become a person through whom the beauty of God is revealed.

Not all of us stand before mountains or oceans each day. Not all of us wake to scenes that stir awe. Many days are much plainer than that. They are filled with chores, appointments, worries, aches, losses, and responsibilities. But even in such days, the world of God within us can still shine.

So I offer a more personal quote: 

“Search not the skies nor the ocean depths for the peace of God, for true grace radiates from within the heart that lives with compassion.”
— Anonymous

I believe this quote carries a needed truth.

We often look outward for peace. We imagine that if only the setting were different, the circumstances easier, the people kinder, or the burdens lighter, then peace would finally come to us. We search the horizon hoping something external will quiet the soul.

But the peace of God does not come to us merely because we stand in beautiful places. It comes more deeply when the heart is softened by grace.

That grace becomes visible in compassion.

The world of God within us is not measured by how spiritual we sound, how many scriptures we can quote, or how deeply moved we are by beautiful thoughts alone. It is revealed in how we live. It appears when we become more patient, more forgiving, more understanding, more willing to carry another’s burden, more ready to listen, more willing to love.

A compassionate heart is one of the clearest witnesses of God’s work within a person.

If I claim to love the beauty of God, but remain harsh, proud, or indifferent to others, then something within me has not yet fully yielded to His grace. But when I offer kindness, when I restrain judgment, when I choose mercy, when I see another person not as a problem but as a soul, then the world of God within me becomes a little more visible.

I do not believe Longfellow meant that humanity is divine in itself. Rather, I hear in his words the truth that God has placed within us the capacity to receive His light, reflect His love, and let His Spirit shape our inner life. The glory within us is not self-created. It is God-given. It is His image, His grace, His presence working upon the heart.

For the Christian, this becomes especially meaningful.

Christ did not simply teach us to admire goodness. He taught us to embody it. He showed that the life of God within us must find expression in love toward others. Compassion is not an ornament of faith; it is one of its living fruits. When grace touches the heart, it does not remain hidden there. It moves outward in mercy.

So today I am left with this simple thought:

The beauty of God around us may inspire us, but the beauty of God within us is what transforms us.

And when that inward grace becomes compassion, the peace of God begins to radiate outward—not only blessing our own hearts, but also touching the lives of those around us.

May we not only admire the works of God around us, but also welcome the work of God within us.

And may that inner work be seen in the compassion we extend, the peace we carry, and the love we give.

  🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️  

Surrendering Into Who God Created Me to Be

 

Dear Reader,

This morning I received a simple quotation by Thích Nhất Hạnh:

“Your purpose is to be yourself. You don't have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just as you are.”

I find myself returning to those words even now.

There is something comforting in the thought that I do not have to spend my life trying to become somebody else.

Yet, from a spiritual perspective, I believe there is another dimension to consider.

Being ourselves does not necessarily mean remaining exactly as we are.

In my life I find there are still things within me that need healing. There are attitudes that need changing, fears that need releasing, habits that need surrendering, and wounds from the past that still influence how I see myself and the world around me.

This insight calls me to continue forward on the spiritual journey—not rejecting who I am today, but also not believing that who I am today is all God intends me to become.

My recovery and my continuing faith in Jesus Christ have taught me that the journey is not founded on rejecting myself or trying to become someone I am not. It is founded on surrender: allowing God to work with the person I am and lead me toward the person He knows I can become.

God does not ask me to become someone else. He asks me to surrender enough for Him to reveal who He created me to become.

There is an important difference.

For years I compared my insides with another person’s outside—their appearance, their clothes, their seemingly carefree way of living, and the successes others appeared to recognize in them. At times, these brothers and sisters even seemed more spiritual than I was.

Without realizing it, comparison kept me from discovering who I was and recognizing the potential God had already placed within me.

I believe my pre-recovery self-image was sustainable only through alcohol and drugs. Liquor and chemicals became a counterfeit rod and staff. They supported the illusion that I was equal to—or even better than—everyone around me.

But God did not create me to become someone else. Through His grace, He is helping me become the person I am still becoming today.

As the Apostle Paul wrote: “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” —1 Corinthians 15:10

Paul’s words are significant because he did not say simply, I am what I am. He added: “By the grace of God.”

Grace was involved. Transformation was involved. God was involved.

Paul remained Paul, but he was not the same man he had always been.

His encounter with Christ did not erase his personality, intelligence, courage, determination, or passion. Instead, those qualities were redirected toward a different purpose.

The man who had once persecuted the followers of Christ eventually became one of Christianity’s greatest witnesses.

God did not replace Paul with another person. He transformed Paul into the person Paul had been capable of becoming through grace.

I bear witness that the same principle applies to all of us today.

In Ephesians we read: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” —Ephesians 2:10

Workmanship suggests something being shaped and formed by the craftsmanship of our Creator.

It reminds me that my life is not merely a self-improvement project. I am more like a structure continually being restored by the original Architect—God—working through His grace, the principles of recovery, and the people of faith He has placed along my path.

I am already God’s creation. Yet I am also unfinished.

Thomas Merton expressed this spiritual truth beautifully when he wrote, “For me to be a saint means to be myself.”

St. Francis de Sales offered similar counsel: “Be who you are and be that well.” He also wrote, “Let us be what God wants us to be, provided we are His.”

Here I recognize a balance between accepting what I am and surrendering what keeps me from becoming what God would have me be.

God accepts us where we are, but His love does not leave us imprisoned there. He invites us forward. He sees our worth, even when we have difficulty seeing it ourselves. He sees the possibility of a life no longer governed by old resentments, but informed by the wisdom those experiences have taught us. He teaches us when to surrender, when to accept, and how to take responsibility for our own errors without assuming responsibility for the errors of another.

Most importantly, He sees our worth long before we finally learn to see it ourselves.

We simply need enough faith to place our lives in God’s hands and allow Him to continue His work.

I offer a simple prayer:

“Lord, help me stop trying to become someone else.

Help me surrender what keeps me from You.

Remove what is false, strengthen what is good, heal what has been wounded, and reveal within me the person You created me to become.

Not my will, but Thy will be done in me.”

🙏  🧘‍♂️  💕  🤗  ☮️

I Am the Message I Carry

Dear Reader,

Today I attended an evening AA meeting where the topic was “Carrying the Message.”

In Alcoholics Anonymous, those words have deep meaning. They remind us that recovery is more than simply not drinking. The traditional Circle-and-Triangle symbol represents AA’s Three Legacies: Recovery, Unity, and Service. Recovery gives us a new way of living. Unity reminds us that we do not walk alone. Service asks us to share with others what has so freely been given to us.

We carry hope. We carry honesty. We carry the witness that a life once broken can, by the grace of God, be restored.

Returning home after the meeting, I began preparing for this Sunday’s church lesson on Proverbs 10–24. At first, the two subjects might seem unrelated. Yet as I read, I began to see how naturally they belong together.

Proverbs teaches that to fear the Lord is not merely to believe in God, but to allow reverence for Him to shape our words, our choices, our relationships, our work, and the way we treat one another.

“The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.”

— Proverbs 15:33 (KJV)

The more I worked on the lesson, the more I realized that the AA idea of carrying the message blends beautifully with the wisdom found in Proverbs. Both ask a similar question: What does what I believe look like when it is lived?

As I walk through life, I am the message I carry.

What I say matters, but how I live eventually gives my words their meaning. I may speak of recovery, faith, humility, and trust in God, but the people I meet will also encounter my patience or impatience, my honesty or avoidance, my willingness to serve or my tendency to remain centered on myself.

This does not mean that recovery makes us perfect, nor that faith makes us flawless. It means that there should gradually be evidence of the direction in which we are walking.

To me, applying Proverbs means seeking to walk a path of righteousness—not merely speaking about spiritual principles, but allowing them to influence my conduct. When recovery and faith begin to change the way I actually live, my life itself becomes a testimony to what the grace of God can accomplish.

Proverbs teaches that wisdom is often seen in very ordinary places:

• in a gentle answer,

• in restraint of speech,

• in diligence at work,

• in humility rather than pride,

• in mercy toward the poor,

• in honesty of heart,

• and in a willingness to receive correction.

AA recovery teaches something remarkably similar. Recovery becomes visible in the quiet evidence of a changed life—one day at a time. A message about recovery becomes more believable when it can be seen in someone who shows up, keeps a commitment, listens before speaking, admits a mistake, makes amends when necessary, and becomes willing to help another person.

One day at a time, our words are given credibility by our conduct.

A person may say many spiritual things, but eventually life reveals something about the message truly being carried. Am I carrying resentment or peace? Pride or humility? Fear or trust? Self-will or a growing willingness to surrender my life more fully to God?

These are not questions I ask in order to judge myself harshly. They are questions that help me examine the direction of my journey.

Perhaps the most meaningful message we carry is not found in our ability to explain truth, but in our willingness to be shaped by it.

The fear of the Lord, as Proverbs teaches, is not terror. It is reverence. It is a heart that gives God His rightful place. And when God is given His rightful place, our words can soften, our choices can grow wiser, our relationships can become more honest, and our work can become more faithful.

Little by little, we begin to carry a more meaningful message—one of hope, change, healing, and a better way of living.

Perhaps carrying the message begins with words, but eventually it must become a way of life.

And that may be one of the clearest forms of carrying the message.

So today I am left with this thought:

I am the message I carry.

May the message I carry in this life not merely be one of speech, but one of character.

May it reflect recovery, humility, compassion, and truth.

And may the reverence I profess toward God become visible in the way I live among His children.

  🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️  

Spirituality and Religion: Must We Choose?

 

Dear Reader,

Today I had a conversation with a friend.

As conversations often do, ours moved through several subjects—family illness, personal concerns, experiences of life, and some of those things we carry within us that are not always easily put into words.

Yet as the conversation ended, I found myself still struggling with one subject that lingered: spirituality and religion. In all honesty, this is not a subject new to either my friend or me.

I have thought about it before. I have discussed it with others, and I believe I have even written about it before.

Yet here it was again, foremost in my mind.

Because the questions would not leave me, I began searching for a better understanding.

As I began this search, I needed to be certain that my motive was clarification—not a desire to prove that my understanding was better or more correct.

I confess, there have been times in my life when I believed spirituality and religion were almost two separate things.

Religion seemed to be about church, scripture, doctrine, commandments, worship, ordinances, traditions, and belonging to a community of believers.

Spirituality seemed much more personal. It was about my relationship with God, prayer, meditation, peace, compassion, searching for meaning, and trying to understand my place in this life.

Which is more important?

Today, through some growth in understanding and perhaps a little enlightenment, I have come to believe that I was asking the wrong question.

Religion without spirituality can become little more than going through the motions.

I can:

• Attend church.

• Read scripture.

• Pray.

• Participate in religious practices.

Each of these practices can be meaningful. Yet for me, religion that does not engage the heart or change the way I treat others becomes an empty cup, holding neither love nor compassion.

Christ spoke of this when He said:

“This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.”

—Matthew 15:8

Those words are uncomfortable if I allow them to become personal. It is much easier to see them as describing someone else. Yet if I allow them to describe me, then I must admit that my religion has fallen short.

So I pause.

Should I follow spirituality alone?

Perhaps I should try to become more spiritual and move away from organized religion.

Yet if I turn to spirituality alone, I am left to decide what feels comfortable. Over time, I have found that my behavior needs guidance well beyond my own desires. Without structure or community, my will can quickly become what I define as God’s will.

When I rely only upon myself:

• I begin to turn away from what is uncomfortable.

• I lose the peace I once enjoyed.

• I become less willing to forgive.

• I turn away from being of service.

• I turn my attention toward selfish concerns and away from my fellows.

Perhaps this is where spirituality and religion must begin to come together.

Religion can provide scripture, teaching, worship, fellowship, and the experience of those who have walked the road before me. Spirituality allows those things to enter the heart.

My experience has taught me that I need both: a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the strength, teaching, fellowship, and accountability of His Church.

Jesus said:

“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

—John 4:24

I am drawn to those last few words:

In spirit and in truth.

Maybe I do not have to choose between them.

Perhaps I need both.

James gives me another thought:

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction…”

—James 1:27

Here religion moves beyond the walls of a church.

• It becomes something lived.

• It becomes compassion.

• It becomes listening.

• It becomes service.

• It becomes reaching out to someone who is hurting.

And I believe that is also where spirituality becomes real.

This brings me back to the conversation that started these thoughts.

Maybe I have spent too much energy trying to decide where religion ends and spirituality begins.

What are they producing in my life?

• Am I becoming kinder?

• Am I more willing to listen?

• Am I more forgiving?

• Am I less judgmental?

• Do I look for opportunities to serve?

Am I becoming more conscious of God in the people and circumstances around me?

And most importantly: Am I becoming more willing to follow Jesus Christ?

He taught:

“By their fruits ye shall know them.”

—Matthew 7:20

The fruit is more important than the label.

I may never completely resolve within myself the discussion of spirituality versus religion.

I do not need to.

What I need is for my religion to deepen my spirituality, for my spirituality to draw me closer to God, and for both to become visible in the way I live and treat others.

In the end, I am beginning to believe that neither spirituality nor religion was ever intended simply to give me something to believe.

They were meant to help me become.

And hopefully, one day at a time, to become a little more like Christ.

The Compassion in Listening

 

Dear Reader,

Tonight I was asked to chair an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the subject of responsibility.

After offering a brief message, the meeting was opened for others to share their own experience, strength, and hope on that subject. As I listened to each member speak, I found myself impressed by another thought: my responsibility as a listener.

Later, I came across this reflection from Tiny Buddha:

“Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’”

That thought stayed with me.

My experience in recovery, and especially as an AA sponsor, has taught me that communication is one of the building blocks of good relationships. What we say matters, and how we say it matters. Yet listening is just as important. Not merely listening to hear words, but listening to understand in a way that helps another person feel seen, heard, and valued.

This is what is often called empathetic listening.

To me, empathetic listening is where compassion stops being an idea and becomes an act. It is the quiet act of giving another person our attention without judgment, correction, comparison, or a prepared response. By becoming still and calm, we offer not only our ears, but our presence, our patience, and our willingness to understand the feelings that may lie beneath the words.

In that kind of listening, something changes within us. We move away from asking, “What should I say?” and toward saying, “Tell me more. I want to understand how you are.” In that moment, we offer a deeply healing message: “You matter. I am here. You are not alone.”

I believe this is more than a communication skill. It is a spiritual grace.

It is also, in a very real sense, a form of Christlike love.

The Savior was never in a hurry to overlook the one soul before Him. Again and again in the scriptures, He noticed people. He allowed them to speak. He understood their sorrow, their fear, their longing, and their faith. Before He taught, He often first made people feel known. Before He healed, He often first made them feel seen.

How many hearts were opened simply because Jesus gave them His attention?

How many lives were lifted because He responded not only to words, but to the deeper need of the soul?

When we listen with kindness, restraint, and love, we do something holy. We create a small space where another person may feel safe enough to tell the truth. And when truth is spoken in a place of mercy, healing can begin.

I am reminded of the counsel found in scripture to be “swift to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19). Those few words contain great wisdom. Sometimes our first responsibility is not to answer, but to hear. Not to instruct, but to understand. Not to speak over another person’s pain, but to sit beside them in it.

Returning to the meeting this evening, I realize now that by truly listening, I was also being taught. Each person who shared enlarged my understanding—not only of the subject, but of the person speaking and of what mattered to them. That kind of knowledge is seldom gained when my own mouth is open.

It is my hope as well that each person who spoke tonight felt, if only for a moment, that they were seen, heard, and not alone.

Listening and empathy have no script. Yet perhaps that is because love itself does not always begin with words. Sometimes it begins with attention. Sometimes it begins with silence. And sometimes it begins when one child of God is willing to listen to another with the compassion of Christ.

🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️

Do Not Judge the Journey Too Soon

 

Dear Reader,

This morning I received a text from a friend. It contained a simple greeting and a quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke:

“Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.”

Good morning 😊

As I often do, I found myself considering both the meaning and the source of those words.

The quotation comes from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. His counsel is simple, yet difficult:

“Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen.”

He goes on to caution against looking backward too quickly with blame, recognizing that our past naturally has a part in everything that meets us today.

With the advantage of having lived through several very different stages of life, I find considerable wisdom in that thought.

In youth and early adulthood, life seemed much more immediate to me. When something happened, I often decided very quickly what it meant and what I should do about it. Just as quickly, I changed course based upon the emotions and circumstances of that particular moment.

I remember, for example, being caught up in the passion and excitement of a relationship and asking the person I was dating to marry me.

There was little serious thought about where we might live, what our responsibilities would become, or even what choices we might someday face concerning children and family.

Life was before me, and my attitude was little more than:

Hoist the sails and full speed ahead.

Only later would I discover that enthusiasm alone does not tell us where the currents are running.

Over the next six years, my wife and I experienced disappointments and difficult times. Eventually, our marriage ended.

At the time, I did not simply see the ending of a marriage.

I saw failure.

I believed that my life as a husband had failed, and the separation and divorce seemed only to confirm the permanence of that judgment.

For several years, I allowed that conclusion to define me.

I became convinced that the harbor of marriage was closed to me and that I would never enter it again.

Looking back today, I understand that period very differently.

Perhaps when we are young, we have not yet sailed enough waters to understand the currents carrying us.

A sudden storm can look like the end of the voyage when we have not yet learned that storms pass, winds change, and sometimes an unexpected current carries us toward a destination we could not yet see.

What I once saw only as failure eventually became a teacher.

With time, I matured.

I became more thoughtful about relationships, partnership, expectations, and what I truly valued in another person.

The ending of that first marriage changed what I thought I wanted and forced me to consider what I truly needed in a life partner.

It also taught me something about humility.

A lasting partnership requires more than passion. It requires patience, compromise, honesty, forgiveness, responsibility, and a willingness to adjust the sails when the wind changes.

Had I possessed then the maturity that experience eventually provided, I might not have charted the same course.

Yet without sailing those waters, I am not certain I would have recognized calmer and wiser waters when they later came into view.

This is where Rilke's words become more than poetry to me:

“Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen.”

That requires reflection.

It requires patience.

And for me, it also requires faith and hope in a loving God.

The experience itself may never change, but with time, recovery, faith, and perspective, our understanding of it can.

Much of that understanding came to me through recovery and scripture.

One of the great lessons I have received through Alcoholics Anonymous is that there is a difference between examining the past and living in it.

Recovery asks us to be honest about yesterday.

We take inventory.

We acknowledge our wrongs.

We recognize where we may have caused harm.

And where possible, we make amends.

But recovery does not ask us to spend the remainder of our lives standing in yesterday's courtroom, repeatedly prosecuting ourselves for what has already been honestly faced.

At some point, we must learn from yesterday and return to the life before us.

We cannot sail today's waters while constantly staring over the stern.

Today is where I have the ability to choose what I will do next.

The Apostle Paul seems to have understood this when he wrote:

“Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark…”
— Philippians 3:13–14, KJV

Paul could not literally forget his past.

He knew what he had done.

He remembered the people he had persecuted.

But after encountering Christ, he refused to believe that his past had the authority to write the final chapter of his life.

That should speak powerfully to all of us.

It is what we do from this moment forward that helps determine our next course.

No matter our age—young or old—we still have some ability to adjust the rigging, turn the wheel, and respond to the winds that meet us.

We cannot control the sea.

We cannot command the wind.

But we can choose how we respond to them.

Paul gives us further reassurance:

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God…”
— Romans 8:28, KJV

I have come to appreciate what that scripture does not say.

It does not say that all things are good.

Some experiences are painful.

Some are consequences of choices we ourselves have made.

Some leave scars.

Some storms damage the ship.

Faith does not require us to pretend otherwise.

The promise is deeper:

God can work through all things.

Even the experiences that once brought shame can, when honestly faced and surrendered to God, eventually become experiences through which we better understand another human being.

The person who once needed a hand extended toward him may someday discover that his own hand has become the one being extended.

The person who once struggled to stay afloat may someday recognize someone else struggling in the same water.

Perhaps that is one of the unexpected gifts of recovery.

We do not erase where we have sailed.

We learn from it.

And sometimes God allows the difficult waters behind us to become the very experience that helps us guide another person through a storm.

Looking back over the years, I find that life is less like a collection of separate events and more like a long voyage.

There are calm seas.

There are violent storms.

There are changing winds.

There are hidden currents.

There are strange and unfamiliar ports.

There are moments when we lose our bearings.

And there are lighthouses—people, principles, scripture, recovery, and experiences of faith—that help us find our direction again.

That is why I return to Rilke's counsel:

Do not be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you.

There is freedom in that.

We are not required to understand every storm while we are still inside it.

We are not required to know where every current will eventually carry us.

We are asked to live faithfully today.

To honestly examine our part.

To make right what we can.

To learn.

To adjust the sails.

And then to continue.

The “what” we are struggling through today may make far more sense after we have sailed a few more miles and ridden a few more waves.

Perhaps faith is not believing that God will always give us calm seas.

Perhaps faith is trusting that He remains with us when the sea is not calm.

And perhaps wisdom comes when we finally realize that one difficult chapter—or one difficult stretch of water—does not define the entire voyage.

So I return once more to the thought that began this reflection:

Do not judge the journey too soon.

We have not yet seen what God may do with it.

Our task is not to demand a clear horizon.

It is to trust the One who can see beyond it.

Then we adjust the sails and continue—

one day at a time,
one choice at a time,
one wave at a time.

  🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️  

The Peace within Us

 

Good morning, Dear Reader,

Today I offer a reflection on two thoughts that at first seem to speak about different kinds of peace.

“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”

—Marcus Aurelius

And

“We cannot buy our own peace of mind at the expense of others.”

—Alcoholics Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 84

Consider this: one thought turns us inward, while the other turns our attention toward those around us. Yet I believe they describe two sides of the same spiritual truth.

All too often I have believed that my personal peace would come if only something outside of me would change—if another person behaved differently, if a problem disappeared, if circumstances became easier, or if the past could somehow be rewritten.

Yet through lived experience, I have come to understand that life rarely grants me that kind of control.

So, as Marcus Aurelius reminds me, I must look elsewhere for the peace I seek.

In Recovery, I have discovered that within each of us there is a quiet place where we can examine our thoughts, surrender what we cannot change, and decide how we will respond to what life has placed before us.

In my case, prayer and meditation have become part of entering that quiet place.

It is there that I can ask:

·    What belongs to me?

·    What must I release?

·    What can I change?

·    What kind of person do I wish to be when I leave this quiet place and return to the world?

There is another important lesson here.

Inner peace cannot simply mean protecting myself from discomfort.

·    Sometimes what looks like peace is actually avoidance.

·    I might remain silent because speaking truth would be uncomfortable.

·    I might withdraw rather than make amends.

·    I might insist upon getting my own way because surrender feels too difficult.

It is entirely possible that I might even convince myself I am protecting my serenity while leaving someone else to carry the consequences of my actions.

This is where the wisdom of Alcoholics Anonymous becomes important:

We cannot purchase our own peace at another person’s expense.

True serenity does not require someone else to lose theirs.

The peace discovered within the soul should eventually appear in our relationships—with greater patience, honesty, forgiveness, humility, and a willingness to make things right.

Jesus taught:

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

—Matthew 5:9, KJV

Notice that He did not simply bless those who possess peace. He blessed those who make peace.

I have come to accept that this begins with me.

When I enter the quiet sanctuary of the soul, I pray. I listen. I examine myself honestly. I allow God to straighten what has become confused within me. Then I carry that peace back into the world.

I try not to demand that others change so that I may be peaceful. Instead, I ask how my own words and actions might become instruments of peace.

I am learning that serenity is not isolation from other people.

It is learning to remain spiritually grounded while living among them.

The quiet retreat Marcus Aurelius describes is therefore not a place in which I hide from life.

It is a place where I prepare myself to return to life differently.

So I ask you, Dear Reader: Is the peace you seek meant only to quiet your own soul, or can the peace you discover within become peace offered to those around you?

If we choose the latter, then I believe we may be discovering something deeper than tranquility.

We may be discovering the peace Christ spoke of when He said:

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.”

—John 14:27, KJV

Perhaps that is the peace I am seeking—not simply freedom from disturbance, but the kind of peace that changes how I respond to others.

Peace begins within, but Christ asks me to carry it beyond myself.

And when I am uncertain how to do that, perhaps there remains one simple question worth asking:

“What would Christ do?”

The choice, ultimately, is ours. For my part, I choose the peace that comes from asking that question.