While waiting to speak with a physician, I noticed the headline on a magazine in the kitchen area with the headline of How to Get Along with Anyone During the Holidays.

How do you keep peace in the family?  The article describes “characters” including the Grinch, the Martyr, the Know-It-All and then tells the reader to do whatever possible to “keep the peace” by simply appeasing all of these characters, but is this really peace?  It’s more like a short-lived truce because it fails to confront the real problem.

Spiritually, the real problem is our lack of peace with God.

God’s idea of peace speaks of His plan to reconcile mankind to Himself. When the angels sang announcing the birth of the Son of God to the shepherds-

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” in the second chapter of Luke, God had in mind the peace that only He can provide in the Gift of His Son.

The greatest peace we can encounter is found in believing faith in Christ.

Consider Paul’s words in Romans 5:1-5 –

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

When we have peace with God, we’re then better able to face the problems at hand with a different attitude thanks to God’s love poured into our hearts.