The Gift of Peace

Frances Ridley Havergal is remembered today--if she is remembered at all--for her hymns and poetry put she was also the author of devotional works.  She was fluent in German and French and nearly so in Italian.  She studied the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture, and loved the Author with all her being.  Like her works, her life richly touched the ones near her and countless many who met or heard her.  The following excerpt from her book Royal Bounty shows how the Lord Jesus' peace is ours through our union with Him:

'My peace I give unto you.' -- John 14:27.

"'Peace I leave with you' is much; 'My peace I give unto you' is more.  The added word tells the fathomless marvel of the gift--'My peace.'  Not merely 'peace with God;' Christ has made that by the blood of His cross, and being justified by faith we have it through Him.  But after we are thus reconciled, the enmity and the separation being ended, Jesus has a gift for us from His own treasures; and this is its special and wonderful value, that it is His very own.  How we value a gift which was the giver's own possession! what a special token of intimate friendship we feel it to be!  To others we give what we have made or purchased; it is only to very near and dear ones that we give what has been our own personal enjoyment or use.  And so Jesus gives us not only peace made and peace purchased, but a share in His very own peace,--divine, eternal, incomprehensible peace,--which dwells in His own heart as God, and which shone in splendour of calmness through His life as man.  No wonder that it 'passeth all understanding.'

"But how? Why does the sap flow from the vine to the branch? Simply because the branch is joined to the vine.  Then the sap flows into it by the very law of its nature.  So, being joined to our Lord Jesus by faith, that which is His becomes ours, and flows into us by the very law of our spiritual life.  If there were no hindrance, it would indeed flow as a river.  Then how earnestly we should seek to have every barrier removed to the inflowing of such a gift!  Let it be our prayer that He would clear the way for it, that He would take away all the unbelief, all the self, all the hidden cloggings of the channel.

"Then He will give a sevenfold blessing:  'My peace,' 'My joy,' 'My love,' at once and always, now and for ever; 'My grace' and 'My strength' for all the needs of our pilgrimage; 'My rest' and 'My glory' for all the grand sweet home-life of eternity with Him."

Thy reign is perfect peace,
Not mine, but Thine;
A stream that cannot cease,
For its fountain is Thy heart, Oh, depth unknown!
Thou givest of Thine own,
Pouring from Thine, and filling mine.