Peace In Your Personal Life

By Brian Mitchell       The following story was run a number of years ago in the Fort Worth, Texas Star Telegram. “The man who spotted targets for American bombers over Hiroshima in August 1945 has been laid to rest in Texas soil after searching the last 33 years for some peace in his life. Claude Robert Earthley was a 24 Year Air Force pilot who picked out Hiroshima through a hole in the clouds and radioed the Enola Gay to bomb her primary targets. He died this past Saturday from cancer in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Houston.     He had been discharged from the service in 1947 following numerous psychiatric tests that indicated severe neurosis and guilt complex. Doctors said that he told him that he felt personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese. In 1960, after a series of small time burglaries, the Van Alstyne, Texas, native told reporters that he had not had any sleep in 15 years. There is no peace, he said.”     One of the primary definitions for the word peace was an “inner calm or tranquility.” Inner peace is something that all men search for, and yet for various reasons, few ever really find it. There are many people in the world and some in the Lord’s Church as well that struggle, as Mr. Earthley did, with their own personal demons and thus they never really enjoy the peace the God intends for all of our lives—Jn.14:1-3, Jn.14:27, Jn.16:33.     If God intended for us to have peace in our lives and Jesus says repeatedly that it is peace that we have in Him; why do so many people live lives characterized by anything but peace? Some people don’t have peace in their lives because they have never come to the only real source of peace in our lives and that is God. In fact, there is no peace in life a part from God, and if you are here today and have never obeyed the Gospel you should not have peace in your life.     The real question though is this; why do so many Christians live lives without peace? How about you?

- Brian Mitchell serves as a minister with the Jackson Church of Christ in Jackson, MO. He may be contacted through the congregation's website at https://www.jacksonchurchofchrist.net