Peace and a Mission

Luke 24:36–49

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• “Peace be with you.”
• “Why are you troubled?”
• “Touch me and see.”
• “You are witnesses of these things.”

Applying the Word to My Life:
I can’t imagine being one of the apostles in that room. Jesus is not only dead but crucified. The people who killed Him are still out there, and you have every reason to think they could come for you next. In one day you managed to lose your teacher, the Messiah, and your safety. The reports of people seeing Jesus are something, but given all that has happened, hallucination is even more likely than a miracle. No wonder they are hiding. Any sane person would be scared. I would probably be there too.

And then Jesus is suddenly standing among them, and the first thing He says is, “Peace be with you.”

I don’t know exactly what I would have been thinking, but the sarcastic part of me probably would have thought, “Really? Peace? You just figured that out? How exactly is that supposed to happen now?”

The fears they are carrying in that room aren’t theoretical. They are going to come true in dramatic fashion. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were going to be imprisoned, beaten, betrayed, and for most of them, eventually martyred for preaching the Gospel. Knowing all this, Christ still greets them with, “Peace be with you.” What is He thinking?

That disconnect really used to bother me. When Christ talked about peace, He was clearly talking about something deeper than what I meant when I was growing up. Back then, peace mostly meant relief. It meant that the hard thing was over, that the danger had passed, that everything was going to be ok in the way I wanted it to be ok. As I have come to know and love Him, I think I am finally starting to see what He meant.

Christ was not handing them peace like a thing. He was bringing them back into it by showing them who they were and what their lives were now for. He stood there alive in front of them. He opened their minds. He made clear that none of this had been random, and none of it had been wasted. They were chosen for this, and now the moment had come to step into it. The suffering ahead was still real, but they were no longer just frightened men hiding in a room.

Eventually they get there, but this is all still pretty new for them. And honestly, many of us are still learning this too. Before I became a lawyer, I worked in IT. It was fine. I could do the job. I could function there. But something always felt off. Then I became a lawyer, and that tension was gone. The work was still hard. The hours were still real. But I no longer felt like I was living in the wrong place.

The way I try to explain this is that it is kind of like the difference between being in water and on land. We can survive in water for a while, but everything is harder there. Movement is harder. Breathing is harder. Even staying alive becomes strain because we are not in the place we were made to live. But when we get back on land, we just move about and live naturally. That resistance is gone. The work of living is still real, but it fits. We are where we are supposed to be.

A lot of us know that feeling in our spiritual lives. We can keep functioning for a long time while something deep in us is off. We can get through the day, manage responsibilities, and keep everything moving, but still carry that quiet tension underneath it all. When our lives are out of alignment with Christ and the mission He has for us, that is what it feels like. And when He brings us back into that alignment, the road may still be hard, but something deeper settles. We know where we belong.

Peace comes when that tension is gone. It is what happens when we are no longer living against the grain of what we were made for, but begin to live where we belong and do what we were made to do. That is the kind of peace Christ is speaking here. Not relief. Not safety. Not the guarantee of an easy road. The peace of knowing Him, belonging to Him, and stepping into the mission for which we were made.

The lives of those men in the room give witness to the power of that peace. Peter had already shown what fear could do to him in the courtyard, and yet later he will stand in public and preach Christ boldly to the very kinds of men he once feared. James will go from hiding in that room to giving his life for the Gospel. That peace did not spare them from suffering. It kept them from going back to being ruled by fear.

A lot of us are not facing prison or martyrdom, but we do know what it is like to live with that same deeper tension. We ask Christ for peace when what we usually mean is relief. We want the hard conversation to go away, the uncertainty to clear, the cost to drop, the road to get easier. But sometimes Christ answers differently. Sometimes He does not remove the hard thing. Sometimes He shows us who we are, what He has given us to do, and where we belong in the middle of it. That is often where peace actually begins.

That means the real question is not just whether we feel calm. The real question is whether we are living close enough to Christ to know Him, belong to Him, and follow the mission He is putting in front of us. Because we can spend a long time asking for relief when what we really need is alignment. We can spend a long time trying to escape the tension of our lives when Christ is trying to bring us into the place where that tension finally gives way.

Jesus loves us too much to only give us relief. If we let Him, He will give us peace.

My Response for Today:
Today, I will ask Jesus to show me one place where I am seeking relief instead of peace.