Make Space to Find Peace – Ann Voskamp

We can do more than just sing about peace on earth this Christmas. We can live peace on earth this Christmas. 

Maybe all we really want for Christmas is some heart-lifting peace.

If Jesus left the comforts of Heaven to bring peace to earth, what comfort are we called to leave to bring peace to Christmas?

Peace always involves leaving.

Jesus leaving Heaven for earth, Jesus leaving Gethsemane for Calvary. And us leaving our comfort zones – leaving our circles, leaving our expectations, leaving our perfectionism, leaving our way for peace. 

Like Jesus intentionally left Heaven to be with enemies and end this war waging between us and God, we’ll have to leave our ease to be with enemies and intentionally wage peace.

Wherever you are – wage peace. 

Peace often means —

There is no peace unless you give up pieces of yourself to gain more of the life you really want. Exhale and let go.

Peace in the midst of never ending to do lists, peace in the midst of never-ending family chafing, peace in the midst of our own personal struggles.

Peace isn’t a matter of circumstances — it is a matter of focus. We wage peace when we pay all of our attention to Christ.

Peace isn’t a place, Peace is a Person. A Person you walk with every day. 

And that person is Christ.

This is the full love story of Christmas – God chose to come as a vulnerable babe, that we would draw close. God’s not about intimidation – He’s about intimacy.

And He’s committed to loving us to death.

This Christmas I’m saying it to myself, again and again: make space in your pace to find PEACE.

Ann Voskamp’s the wife of a farmer, mama to 7, and the author of the four New York Times bestsellers, The Broken Way , The Greatest Gift, Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, and the sixty-week New York Times bestseller One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, which has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages.