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Let

             Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:15)

Let: 1) To cause or to make, 2) give opportunity to or fail to prevent, 3) to free from, or as if from confinement, 4) to permit to enter, pass, or leave

There are more definitions for the word let but the point in providing the definitions is that in this verse, it probably doesn’t mean passively failing to prevent. You may need to grant peace permission to enter, but I suspect it’s more active than that. We’re to cause or make the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts. I’ve written before about causing anger to rule in my heart back in my teens and twenties. I encouraged it. There were times I probably picked anger up by the scruff of its neck, carried it into my heart, locked the door, dropped the mangy creature in the middle of the room. There was a time, much later, when I concluded that peace means a lack of emotional turmoil – a sort of emotional flatline. I didn’t want to be angry all the time any more, but I also didn’t want to be dead.

But, there’s another way to look at this issue. If you ride rollercoasters, watch horror movies, or eat sugar, chances are good that you have had to escalate your use to get the same “high.” If you get away from these things, it’s likely that they won’t have the same effect. If they do, it might be at a much lower “dose.” In that sense, peace is the healthy condition that makes it possible to recognize other emotions at a lower threshold, so that you don’t have to reach “out of control” to realize you’re angry, afraid, etc.

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