PEACE

This is my favorite time of year!  Not because it is time to celebrate the holidays (or my birthday), but because a new year is just around the corner.  It’s the clean, crisp pages of my new planner and calendar ready to be written all over.  The excitement of setting goals and the realization what new adventures await.  What new friendships will I form?  What new places will I go?  So much unknown is waiting to be seen and discovered.  I love to take inventory of all the things that have happened throughout the year.  How have I grown?  What has changed? I refuse to live the same year 90 times and call it a life. In order to prevent getting stuck in a rut, you must have focus and intentionality. So for the past several years, I have used a focus word to be the theme for my year. 

Towards the end of 2016, I was reflecting on everything that happened throughout the year and looking ahead to the New Year. I felt the Lord show me that my focus word for 2017 should be PEACE.  At first, I sort of smirked.  I thought to myself “I don’t know if that is really from God”.  Peace seems like a generic word for me.  In previous years, my focus word was something WAY out of my character and something that really “stretched” me.  My focus word for 2016 was DISCIPLINE.  No one likes that word.  It is hard.  It doesn’t come naturally.  You have to intently keep yourself focused on discipline to see the results.  (And I certainly did in 2015!)  But, peace…?  That is just part of who I am, my personality, and how I move through life.  It comes very natural for me to live a peaceful life.  However, the closer 2017 was approaching, I felt that prompting become stronger and I settled on focusing on PEACE in 2017.  Honestly, I had somewhat of an ominous feeling lurking about that maybe some terrible things would be happening this year and that is why God wanted me to be focused on peace.  Isn’t it awful how often we tend to assume the worst instead of believe for the best? It is truly amazing how when you focus on something – good or bad- it will manifest in your life.  As soon as the new year commenced, reminders of PEACE started showing up EVERYWHERE in my life! It was a sweet kiss from Heaven. My loving Savior gently reminded me of His promise of supernatural peace for His children in every situation.

My initial premonition was partly true. Bad things did happen this year. Many things happened this year that have required us to choose peace over completely losing it.  There is a heightened sense of anxiety among nearly everyone I speak with. Every day we have the opportunity to look at what is happened around us and be focused on the dreadful condition of our world, or choose to entrust every area of our lives to the Prince of Peace.  In the midst of natural disasters, political and social unrest, mass shootings, and whatever else is going on in your personal life; you can still have the peace that passes all understanding (Phil 4:7).  “You can have conflict and still be at peace if God is in the situation because peace is not the absence of something, but the presence of someone” – Robert Morris.

Peace is not just for me and not just for 2017.  The holidays tend to be a stressful time for most people.  Choose to live in peace!  Be a carrier of God’s peace everywhere you go.  Be a thermostat, not a thermometer. You set the atmosphere with peace everywhere you go.  Don’t let your emotions go up and down with all that is going on around you.  Our world is in desperate need of more peace.  Receive His Peace today and then go spread it.

Peace out!

Angela Navarro