PEACE OF MIND

Listen to the melody of these words: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee" (Isaiah 26:3). "Perfect peace" - is there any possession in life more desirable than that? Many nights I drive a hundred or so miles to get home after some speaking engagement. Before I go to bed, I like to go to our children's rooms and look at their faces. They are sound asleep, perfectly relaxed, completely at peace. I wonder why the people I've seen that day are not like that. Once we did have that peace but as we grow older our lives become more complicated. We think of the living we have to make, the debts we owe, of what will happen to us in our old age. We worry about the world situation, we get cross with other people, we think about the wrongs we have committed, we are afraid for our health. Gradually the peace of our minds is drained away and gone. "Whose mind is stayed on Thee," said the prophet, is the way to perfect peace! First, we need to learn to empty our minds. It is impossible to be at peace as long as we hold certain things in our minds. When we come in at night we wash our hands, sending down the drain the dirt we have picked up during the day. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could wash our minds as we wash our hands? After Rabbi Liebman wrote his book, Peace of Mind, he was swamped with people seeking that peace. His mail was heavy, his telephone rang constantly, people came to his study all day and even to his home at night. He was a kindhearted young man of only thirty-eight years. He tried to help every person and he died in three years, at forty-one. He just couldn't stand the burden. But before he died he said, "I am appalled at the multitudes of people who have never learned to empty their minds." I know of a man who habitually brought his problems home with him at night. He talked about his problems at the dinner table, brooded over them during the evening hours, took them to bed to keep him company during his troubled sleep. One night, as he turned off the sidewalk to the steps of his home, he hit upon a plan. "Tonight," he said, "I am leaving all my worries here on the steps, I'll pick them up again in the morning." To do a thing like that requires mental discipline, but it can be done. That night he enjoyed his dinner, he found his family so much better companions; he slept better. But the best part, he explained, was that the next morning when he picked up his troubles as he walked down the steps, he found they were not nearly so heavy, and some of them were even gone entirely. Instead of leaving our worries on the doorstep, we need to learn to leave them with God. Study carefully these words: What a Friend we have in JESUS, All our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer! O, what peace we often forfeit, O, what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer! [All Things are Possible through Prayer, Charles L Allen, Spire Books, New Jersey, USA, 1972].