Finding Peace in a Troubled World

My daughter returned home yesterday afternoon after spending a few hours with friends. The first thing she reported to me was that one of her gang told her that he believed we were living in the "End times."

My daughter's friend vocalized what many people alive today are thinking: our world is in such a mess it cannot possibly be fixed.

First off, we are compelled to remind our readers that such thoughts are not new. History is replete with the world being in a terrible mess, as it was before both of the Great Wars of the 20th century as well as in the period leading up to the Civil War in the USA, and during many other extremely difficult times in history.

But acknowledging the inevitability of living in a troubled world does not answer the question underlying: How Can I Find Peace in a Troubled World?

In a profound way, finding peace is not the answer.

Peace begins for each one of us with the realization that to experience what is our hearts greatest desire, we must give up worrying incessantly about our world's troubles.

Peace is something that we do.

To experience it, we first forget 'our troubled world for as long as are able. Then, we look around and find somebody to help nearby, not in the Ukraine, not in Russia and not in any other place. Peace is to be experienced in the here and now, in us.

We experience peace when we help an elderly person cross a crowded street, when we say a kind word to a person who has been saddened; and, lo and behold, when we hug a person near to where we are.

In other words, we will never know peace by our worrying over how troubled the world is.

Forgetting the worries of the world for a while enables us to do what we must do to find peace.

Amen and Amen.