Peace-Keeper
"You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you." (Isaiah 26:3 NIV)
I've read Isaiah 26:3 dozens of times and always bee-lined for the peace.
The other day, I ran across (or, rather, God steered me across) this verse again, but this time, I hovered over that third word: "keep."
"Keep" as it is used here has less to do with storing something and more to do with maintaining something. (Think of "keeping" a house.) It conveys present-tense constancy and ongoing attention.
God does not just take us to a point of peace, drop us off, and then leave us there to ration out that peace for the rest of our lives. Instead, He keeps refreshing our peace. He keeps tending to it. He keeps polishing it up.
But we have to do our part, too, and this is where I need to borrow from the King James Version of Isaiah 26:3: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." I love that word "stayed," which in other versions is translated "steadfast" or "fixed."
Improbably, when I was thinking about this particular word, my mind went to colonial women's foundational garments. (I told you it was improbable.) "Stays" were those boned contraptions that essentially kept everything in place and supported proper posture.
When my mind is "stayed" on my Peace-Keeper, it's going to be in the right place, with the proper posture toward God: upward-looking; reverent; worshipful.
There is one other hinge word in this promise of peace: "because."
"Because" in this instance is answering an unspoken "why." When there are so many reasons for my mind to be unsteady and so many places other than God where it could go, why should my mind be steadfast? Why should I "stay" it on God? The answer: "because" I trust in Him. Because I know I can count on Him to bear the full weight of my sin and my weakness and my incompletion and my neediness without dropping me.
This trust is not misplaced, because God is in fact fully able to bear my weight. If I "trust" in a decrepit, termite-eaten chair, I cannot blame it for falling apart when I lean into it; it is only doing (or not doing) what it's capable of. But I can trust God to keep my peace completely when I stay my mind on Him as a demonstration of my trust in Him.
I keep God in my mind. God keeps His peace in me.
Perfect.
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I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to tell me what you really think. Years ago, I explained to my then-two-year-old that my appointment with a counselor was "sort of like going to a doctor who will help me be a better mommy." Without blinking, she replied, "You'd better go every day." All of which is just to say I've spent some time in the school of brutal honesty!