Where Can I Turn For Peace?

Peace seems to be a rare and precious commodity in our world today and the questions asked by the first two verses of the hymn, Where Can I Turn for Peace?, seem to be especially appropriate:

Where can I turn for peace? Where is my solace?

When other sources cease to make me whole?

When with a wounded heart, anger, or malice,

I draw myself apart, searching my soul?

Where when my aching grows, where when I languish,

Where in my need to know, where can I run?

Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?

Who, who can understand? He, only one.

-       Hymns 129

The answer to the pressing need for peace in our lives is to draw near to the Savior, not just by reading the scriptures and praying, but by finding other ways to bring Him into our lives. Several days ago a member of my ward posted an inspiring video of her and her fellow Young Performing Missionaries singing a beautiful song called “Invocation.” The song takes its text from Matthew 18:20 – the Lord’s promise that “…where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (The video can be found HERE). Although we miss gathering to worship together on Sundays with our fellow congregants, we can each draw on the Lord’s promise to feel his presence when we gather to worship Him in our homes.

 The Lord’s promise to be in our midst is not just restricted to formal worship services either.  Anytime we gather together with someone else with a desire to lighten their burdens - whether it be in our homes, through a phone call, a text message, or an online meeting – we qualify to have him be with us. In fact, whenever we do anything to serve another person we are doing the Lord’s work and he will smile upon us and magnify our efforts. The peace we will feel from spending this time with our Savior, however small the gathering, can carry us through the difficulties we face in these uncertain times.

And why do we want to have the Savior in our midst? Because there is nobody that is as intimately acquainted with our trials and difficulties as he is, and he knows how to mend us!  The third verse of Where Can I Turn for Peace? speaks eloquently of the help He provides us:

He answers privately, reaches my reaching,

In my Gethsemane, Savior and friend.

Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching,

Constant he is, and kind, love without end.

Shortly before going to Gethsemane and facing the awful agony of the atonement, our Savior gave his apostles these beautiful words of comfort:

            “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.  In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

I testify that Christ has overcome the world, and that he is the Prince of Peace as a result. He knows our needs, and he will heal us as we reach out to help and heal those who are hurting around us. I know that as we strive to be kind in the way that we address each other, respond to each other, and serve each other we will find that the greatest healing will come into our own hearts.

May the Lord grant all of us the peace we are longing for as we work together to lift each other up.