“You will keep in perfect peace
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.”
~Isaiah 26:3 (TNIV).
Isaiah talks a lot about peace; a general word search reveals it’s mentioned twenty-five times in the Today’s New International Version. But of those passages this is the one that attracts the eye of the one searching for a way to peace.
Peace and righteousness are quite fundamentally linked, especially as it’s shown in Isaiah (see Isaiah 9:7; 32:17; 48:18; 60:17).
The Righteousness of Faith-Held Trust
Can there be a better basis of righteousness—the hinging component to peace—than trust?
Trust will lead us to peace, both today and in our future.
But trust is a habit of letting go; it’s the art of having faith in something... hopefully God. And trust in God is what’s in our scope, for any other trust is forlorn to disaster eventually.
Why does faith in God work?
It’s simply because when we trust God we work with the nature of life. We’re working on our virtue which never ultimately fails. Indeed, this virtue—which comes from God—is our way of overcoming the world; if we understand that this world is often designed in ways to trap us away from peace.
And all this brings us peace. Peace is the result of all the faith-venturing, if we’re doing it right. Peace such as this is a lasting peace. It is from a mind stayed in truth, steadfast and solemn.
Ultimately, the lasting peace which every human being hungers for is only available in God; all else are stop-gap measures.
Let us be steadfast of mind to trust God, for God’s perfect peace—that which transcends our understanding—will then be ours.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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