Where Does Character Develop?

"...suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope..."  Romans 5:3-4.

Recently, our congregation has begun a focus on reconciliation.  It's a focus that has a lot of bearing on our lives, since we all find ourselves in conflict and disagreements quite often in life.  Anytime we have conflict, we have a need for reconciliation.  It could be for something as small as which TV show to watch, or as large as when a family is torn apart by conflict.  Reconciliation is needed to restore the relationships that are injured when conflict enters.

Over the years, I've thought about this topic a lot.  And one of the aspects of conflict and reconciliation involves the building of character.  Now, character is an interesting thing.  For starters, I'm going to use the word character to mean that inner self-assurance that we have which enables us to stand firm in what we believe in.  In other words, character happens when we know who we are and have the awareness of ourselves to stand firm for what we believe in, or to stand up for what is right, even in the face of disagreement.

To put it simply, this kind of character doesn't just happen.  Well, it may be a God-given gift to some, but for most people, we have to have such character built up in ourselves.  And if part of our Christian life is to develop a life of character in those who hold the faith, we do need to ask ourselves how such character is developed.

One conclusion I have drawn over the years is that character does not really develop when things are going smoothly in life.  The building and development of character seems to happen most when we face difficulties and challenges in life.  It's very much like what St. Paul wrote in the verses above, from his letter to the Roman Christians.  Suffering produces endurance, as we learn how to endure that which we'd rather not face, and that endurance produces character.  Character is produced as we learn how to endure the tough times of life, and how to handle them in ways that fit with God's will and design.  Character is created when tough times arise, and not so much when life is going well and easy.

In a way, character develops through conflict.  How we learn to handle conflict will say much about how our character develops.  As we begin to overcome our natural tendencies, and as we seek to follow God's will and design in conflict, character is created.  Not easy, not at all.  But it is much like the refining fire.  Only as the wrong, sinful approaches to conflict are burned off do we see character purified.  It will always be incomplete in this life, but character can be refined to shine more as we face life's difficulties and challenges.

Where does Peace come From?

"I NEED A LITTLE PEACE AND QUIET!!!"  I would imagine that, at some point in our lives, we all have felt like we needed to shout something like that out loud.  Maybe life was a little too hectic.  Maybe a lot of was going on.  Maybe we found ourselves in a situation that we hadn't planned for our counted on, and we needed some way to escape from it.

Peace and quiet.  It sounds so nice, doesn't it?  This is especially true when we live in a world of demands on our time, and where we tend to be surrounded by noise and sound almost constantly.  Take a moment to think about it.  When is the last time you were able to take 10 minutes, where no one was making a demand of your time, and where you could actually sit there without any kind of noise or sound?  For many, doing something like that is unnerving because we've become so accustomed to dealing with noise and demands constantly.

For a moment, allow your mind to think about this question.  Where does peace come from?  Does peace come merely from the absence of things like sounds and demands?  Is that true peace?  Or is it something more along the lines of merely escaping "real life" for a little while?  In a way, we could make the case that something that is only temporary isn't really true peace. 

So where does peace come from?  Well, you may remember yesterday that I defined peace as being in line with God's will and design for life.  If that's the case, then you may not be surprised that peace itself is a gift that comes to us from God.  If peace is being in line with how God created us to live, then being restored to that is the work of God, a work that begins in us when God extends His promise of renewal to us through the waters of our baptism.

In other words, true peace comes from God.  Sure, we may try to search in ourselves for "inner peace" (and I'll talk about that a little more at some point), or we may try to escape from the demands of daily life to find peace, but those are fleeting.  True peace comes from God.  True peace has a high cost, which came at the cost of Jesus' life on the cross.  True peace is a gift.  It's not something we can find, or give ourselves.  It has to come from the one who is the author of peace, the very Prince of Peace Himself.

Seeking Peace

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you..."  Jesus in John 14:27

Disruptions happen in our lives with alarming regularity.  We are creatures of habit and routine (at least, many of us are like that), and when things come along that disrupt our habits and routines, we find ourselves somewhat out of sorts.  It may not be a huge disruption, but sometimes even the smallest thing is enough to throw us off track.

Over the past several months, my family and I have been renting a house while we searched for a more permanent home.  In the last couple of weeks, we have closed on the house that will become our home.  We started lining up the various things we wanted to get done before we moved in, and also began packing up everything that we had been using that needed to be moved.  Needless to say, there has been some disruption to our home lives while all of that has been taking place.

I also find this at the office.  The month of August has been set aside to get several work items done, such as new paint and new carpet.  Up to this point, it hasn't greatly affected me, but I know that the day is coming up when everything in my office will need to be moved out for a day or two while new carpet is installed.  Not really a major or long term disruption, but it does change the routine and habit a little bit.

As a creature of habit and routine, I like when things go smoothly.  It seems a lot more peaceful then.  But then again, I have also noticed that, in my line of work, there are a lot of things that simply don't fit themselves into a routine or habit.  And that's when I really start to realize that Jesus is talking about something far deeper than what I might be thinking about in the words quoted above.

The peace that Jesus brings isn't the kind of peace that is going to make everything in this world go smoothly.  Our sinful natures, the presence of sin, and the work of the devil will make sure of that.  Jesus doesn't promise the kind of peace that we tend to think of, such as when people get along without arguments or disruptions, or when life runs smoothly.

Instead, Jesus brings a far deeper peace.  It's the kind of peace that knows that our lives are going to be disrupted regularly, by lack of routine, by sin, by others.  The peace Jesus brings is the kind of peace that says, "sure, it's hectic and crazy, but even in all of that, I'm not going to leave you all alone.  You don't have to face it as though it's you against the world.  I won't allow it to become more than what I created you to handle."

Part of me doesn't like that.  I want Jesus to make things smoother, not simply to remind me that He's there with me and that He's actually limiting the disruptions in my life.  But then, there's definitely something reassuring in knowing that things could actually be a lot worse, and I've got someone with me that makes sure that it's never more than I can manage or handle.