Jer 8:11 They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace.

     

Sometimes, when the sun is shining and we're feeling healthy and fit, we just shrug at life's problems and think, “It's all right, it will all work out in the end.” The trouble is that without our contribution to bring good, it may well not!

 

In Jeremiah's day, Israel had drifted away from their relationship with God and were in a poor state. Their leaders should have called them back to God, but hadn't. They felt like we sometimes do as described in that first paragraph, and said, “Peace, be quiet, it's all right” and it wasn't. For the time being there may not have been enemies encroaching on their borders, but the biggest lack of peace was within each of them, because unless you are at peace with God, you are not at peace!

 

Today we can try and order our lives and be in control. We can do a variety of things to help ourselves. We live in a day when self-help books fill shelves, but still there is no peace. Peace only comes when a person has come to God acknowledging their need and asking for help and receives the good news about Jesus Christ. Peace with God, which affects all areas of our lives, only comes through knowing God through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross, through receiving his cleansing and forgiveness. Only when that happens are we able to be at peace. Live in that peace today.