This morning I’ve been praying over hand written prayer requests I carried home from women I met in African towns and villages.

Prayers for healing, for conception, for a husband’s salvation, for peace from tormenting dreams, for a child who has wandered far from God. Prayers for peace in the family, for provision, and for a husband to allow her to attend church.

These are the the things they thought in that moment, would bring them peace.
The things that would stop the pain, end the discord, or meet their need.

 

What’s on your list?
What’s do you need for your peace?

 

When Jesus stood looking out over Jerusalem, He wept. He wept because that city, full of Abraham’s children, didn’t know the things that would make for their peace.

Israel, on that day, wanted freedom from Roman tyranny. Jerusalem hoped for a return of the glory it had experienced under David and Solomon. Thirty years earlier, a few faithful in the city, like old Simeon & Anna, had been waiting for Messiah. They saw Him, as a baby, being presented in the Temple. Were there any others like them in the city now?

 

In our frailty, our humanness, we rarely know what things pertain to our peace. We fixate on our most pressing life circumstances and our most momentarily distressing ISSUE.

 

I don’t know about you, but for me, I’m often clueless about what I really need in my life to have peace.

But God knows.

And He cares.
Jesus wept over a city full of people who needed peace, the peace He wanted to give them, but knew they would reject.

Don’t make that same mistake.

He wants to give us peace.

 

Peace is most often connected to trust in the Bible.

 

I’ve taken the liberty of adding a line to the prayer requests this morning:

God, give this woman faith to trust you for ______________________________.

You will keep in perfect peace
all who trust in you,
all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
Isaiah 26:3