Peace

I just finished this really terrific book on interior peace. It mainly talks about being peaceful within which allows God to speak to us. The author gives the analogy that calm water is able to reflect the sun while water in turmoil does not. In the same way when we are worrying about things and are minds and hearts are full of clutter we don't hear God's voice. Trying it out in my life I have found it to be very hard. For instance, with our condo I want to just trust God, but instead I find myself fretting over every detail. It is difficult to trust that God will take care of us.

One of the other challenges of this book is to be patient. I was struck by the fact that we can desire good things but fall into sin by desiring them in the wrong way:

"Because the thing that we want is good, even seen as desired by God, we feel justified in wanting it with that much more impatience and displeasure if it is not realized. The more a thing seems good to us, the more we are agitated and preoccupied to realize it!"

Another quote from the book....

"That is to say that our wanting must always be caring, peaceful, patient, detached and abandoned to God. It should not be an impatient wanting, hurried, restless, irritated, ect."

Interesting, eh? The book is real short and it is called Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Father Jacques Philippe.