Read, Write, Love, Repeat

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You.” Isaiah 26:3 (NIV)

A passionate reader my whole life, I love stories with a great plot twist, one where something comes out of left field and takes the characters down a road they never predicted. It’s the stuff bestselling fiction is made of. A truly skilled author can craft each turn in the plot to take us to a satisfying end we didn’t anticipate.

It’s different, however, when you’re that character in the story and a plot twist collides with your life, derailing the plans and trajectory you were following. Illness (yours or a loved one’s), loss of a job, marriage difficulties, ailing parents, challenges with kids, betrayals in friendships, death of loved ones- unexpected, all life-altering moments that take you from what you planned to what you never asked for.

I’ve had my share of the unexpected in the past year. A career-stopping chronic illness diagnosis, the unexpected death of a lifelong friend, and a ring-side seat to my brother’s cancer battle have rocked my peace. Yeah. Enough chaos in my life, thank you very much.

I know you can relate. We all have things that crash into our lives, events stranger than fiction that lay waste to what we planned and expected.

However, none of these plot twists in our lives surprises God, the Author and Perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Since He’s the Author, He already knows what will happen, that our story ends with Him in eternity, that every turn in the narrative is a step to that end.

Even when we trust the Author with the end of the story, how do we find peace in the middle of the painful place of the unexpected? I’ve wrestled with this question in countless pre-dawn prayers over the past year. This is the cry of all our hearts when life is the opposite of peaceful.

Unexpected turns are as old as humankind. God’s people clung to the words of encouragement penned by the prophet Isaiah, a song of praise after a prophecy of destruction. On the heels of the prophecy of pain, he gives us the path to perfect peace- in the original Hebrew, “shalom shalom.”

Peace and more peace.

Peace perfected.

The opposite of what left turns feel like, right? But what a profound promise: perfect peace is possible in the middle of the toughest plot twists.

“You will keep in perfect peace” -depends on God’s keeping, not the state of events surrounding us.

“those whose minds are steadfast“ -depends on our focus on an unchanging God, not on our changing circumstances.

“because they trust in You” -depends on trusting our faithful God, not us fixing our unpredictable situations.

Perfect peace- shalom shalom. It’s only found because we know we can trust the Author hasn’t left us in the middle of the plot twist alone, and is bringing us to the story’s end He has planned for us.