“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16: 33) Jesus spoke these words to His disciples just before His betrayal, arrest and eventual crucifixion. He prefaced them with the explanatory remark, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.” (John 16:33) His words are both a reminder and a source of comfort for us in this millennia when we are bombarded daily with print headlines and electronic news scrolls that alert us to the latest “troubles of the world.” Separation of immigrant children from their parents and their placement in detention camps. (Why did I think of Germany of the 1930’s and 40’s?) Foreign influences in our democratic processes such that we have doubts about the legitimacy of the results of the last presidential election. Cultural divisiveness based upon racism and bigotry running amok. Dr. King’s idealistic dream that his children would one day be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin squashed. Surely the words of James Russel Lowell written in 1844 as the crisis of slavery confronted the nation are applicable now: “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, – Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.” Now as then we feel the troubles we face are almost beyond our ability to alter or correct. Yet, Jesus prepared us as He did the believers over 2000 years ago for such a time as this. The inevitability of “trouble” is part and parcel of human existence. It is always with us. As believers we must not lose hope, but instead find our peace in the Savior’s victory over the world’s evil by His resurrection. Because He lives, we can do all in our power to resist the evil of our time imbued with the peace He gives us even in midst of the troubles we face.
Love. Joy. Peace.