Guest Post by Author Lauri Lemke Thompson
“You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” Isaiah 26:3 (NKJV)
I had decided to read through Isaiah. One day this well-known Scripture gem
popped out at me.
Perfect peace – what an astounding promise.
Six days passed. I had become busier than usual. With what? The usual
responsibilities, but then a couple of major changes entered my world, adding to those duties. Decisions requiring deadlines brought stress. Also, I probably spent more hours than I should have on entertainment – harmless entertainment, but I felt I needed an escape from work and worry.
One night I tossed and turned, sensing something was very wrong. I felt so
unfulfilled and unsettled. That is, not at peace. At all. Certainly not in perfect peace.
I had been accomplishing projects, meeting challenges, and enjoying
distractions. What I had not been doing was feeding my spirit or my soul. Oh, perhaps a morsel here (a cursory Bible or devotional reading) or a snack there (a Christian song). But a mind “stayed” or fixed on God? No.
Insomnia got me up that night, but missing something deep kept me up.
I returned to chapter 26 in Isaiah. I found that shortly after that “perfect peace”
promise, one bumps into the following: “My soul yearns for You in the night,” the prophet of old had written. Me too – I was yearning for God also.
And it wasn’t only at night. “In the morning my spirit longs for You,” Isaiah
went on. My feelings matched the prophet’s.
Reading his description of what was making him unsettled prompted me to write the following poem. When you feel a distinct lack of peace, perhaps it will remind you how to find the path back to God’s perfect peace.
Yearning and Longing
Yearning and Longing
Don’t I spend hours of life
Experiencing those words
Without knowing why
Yearning and Longing
For something
Or Someone
And it stems from
My inner being
My Soul and My Spirit
One Yearns
The Other Longs
And this is a good thing
A very good thing
For if I did not
Yearn and Long
I would continue to
Work hard
Problem solve
And tune out
But never get to
The deeper things
That matter
Never choosing
The better thing.
A Wisconsin native, Lauri Lemke Thompson appreciates living with her husband in the lovely Ozark mountains in Branson, Missouri. She is active in Christian Women’s Connection (Stonecroft) and the Ozarks Chapter of the American Christian Writers. Her two books, Hitting Pause and Pressing Forward, are collections of her articles and devotions. Her bimonthly column appears in the Branson Globe newspaper.