the helper inside is our greatest path to peace

​Facebook was dominated by two themes yesterday: the hopeful and the hopeless. This was largely driven by who one supported in the recent elections.

I start my mornings reading the bible. So neither of yesterday's themes are surprising. For thousands of years people's hopes have risen and fallen depending on who the ruling party was at the time.

In fact, when Jesus was breaking the news to his disciples that he would be leaving this earth soon, they were distraught. Not because he was leaving, but more because he was leaving before he'd overthrown the political and religious leadership at that time.

If you leave, they were wondering, where on earth will we ever find peace?

Jesus told them:

“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 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.

I know I lose a lot of readers as soon as they read the words "holy spirit." It's a concept that sounds way to other-wordly to insert into a real world struggle.

I guess it doesn't run me off because I get it. I get it because over the course of my life I've come to realize the greatest battle I have finding peace is the battle raging inside me. Sometimes battles that campaign in the world around me distract me from that truth - at times they become a convenient outlet to blame for that truth - yet still, the battle rages on.

I think Jesus was telling his disciples, I'm not sticking around to overthrow what you think is your problem, I'm leaving behind a spirit to live as a helper inside you where the real problem exists.

And Jesus wasn't doing this because he longed for us to be at peace with ourselves. He did it because he knew that was the only way we'd ever be at peace with one another. Given his biggest commandment for us was to love one another, he saw this peace with ourselves not as a way to overcome an internal war, but as a fuel to ignite the kind of external love he longed for us to experience.

Many mornings I sit here and close my eyes and search for silence. I sit here and seek a space that closes a door on all the noise in the world - no matter how noisy that noise might be at the time. I don't do it for quiet itself. I don't even do it for peace. I do it because I've found in the quiet the helper does its best work.

I do it because when I emerge from the quiet, the world around me seems more peaceful. When the noise picks up - because it always does - those quiet mornings somehow seem to surface as a reminder that the helper is still there. I don't ask the reminder to show up - it just does.

The helper is there to remind me that the war that escalates the most when the noise of the world cranks up is the war inside me.

That's why Jesus tried to console his disciples by telling them he wasn't sticking around to quiet the world around them. Instead, he was leaving a helper to bring peace to the world within them.

And it's my personal experience, that helper is my best path to the living out the theme of peace - both inside and out.