Peace is an invitation. We need to hear it.

​When life gets to pushing us around, when people get to pushing us around, we can miss God in that. We miss God because we think God is in the midst of the pushing.

But God doesn't push. God pulls.

So often we get overwhelmed by the way life's storms are pushing us around. Pushing us around with unemployment. Or broken relationships. Pushing us around with guilt. Shame. Pushing us around with loneliness and isolation.

Life can get to pushing us so hard that we can feel like we are being pushed under water.

Drowning.

But God's hands are not conspiring to hold us down. God's hands are reaching down to pull us out.

God is not bullying us into submission, God is calling us into freedom.

We can miss that. Because so often life feels like a pressure cooker pushing us from obligation to obligation. Pushing us into this challenge and then into that challenge. Pushing us to the point life always feels like raging waters and never feels like flowing stream.

Always feels like pressure and never feels like peace.

Maybe that's because in the push we never stop to look for the pull. Maybe because while life's barking orders we never stop to hear the gentle call of God. Maybe as we are so overwhelmed by life's misdirection we never stop and grab hold of God's call into direction.

I told someone the other day that it's been many years since I woke up feeling like I have to go to work. I think that's because I no long work for all the reasons life taught me I had to work. Today I work in response to God pulling me into work he's longing for me to do.

Life no longer pushes me to work each day. God pulls me there. Work is no longer obligation, it's response to invitation.

I think maybe we all need to do that a little more often. When we get to feeling beat up by obligation, we need to stop and pause and find quiet and listen for the invitation.

When life feels like a bully, we need to listen for our friend.

Because God is not a bully.

God is not pushing us around.

God is pulling us. He's calling us. He's offering an invitation.

Often life feels overwhelming and distressed. Many times that's not because we haven't been invited into peace. It's because we aren't listening for the invitation.

When life pushes, God pulls.

If life pushes you today, listen for the pull.

And accept it.