peace: a matter of focus

Last time, I wrote about God's perfect peace that comes to those who stay focused on Him. We find this wonderful promise of peace in Isaiah 26:3:

You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on You,
because he trusts in You.

According to Isaiah, the key to keeping our minds stayed or fixed on God is to trust God. Sounds simple enough, and those of us who have been in church for long know we ought to trust God. This is one of those times, though, when it’s easier said than done. Circumstance gets in the way, and many things compete for our attention. My work is not going well: do I keep my mind fixed on that problem or on God? Money is tight, my child has a health problem, a tragedy has occurred to a close friend–the list goes on. As the commercial says, “Life comes at you fast.” And with each problem, we are tested in our focus.

And it really is a matter of focus. If you’ve played with a camera much, you know that there’s a limit to how many things can be in sharp focus. Focusing on one thing means that something else blurs–and by default, becomes less important. It’s easy to allow the problem–close-up, right here next to us, immediate and demanding–to become the object of our focus, to become the thing on which our mind is stayed. We don’t throw God out of the picture; we acknowledge Him, and we know that He is there, just not in the middle of what we see. He has receded to the background, and by default is less important than the problem.

I suspect that we all want to focus on God, want to trust Him, but we don’t always know how. I have some ideas about why that is. Consider the definition of trust: ” firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.” That’s a pretty tall order–unless you know very well the one you are trusting. And that, I believe, is the root of the problem for many of us. We just don’t know God all that well. We know about Him, but we don’t know Him for ourselves.

For me, one way to keep the focus on God, to come to know Him and so trust Him, is to learn about what He has done. His actions reveal His character. And Isaiah helps us with that. For example, chapter 25 begins with a celebration of God’s defeat of those who have opposed Him and His people (the cities in this passage):

O Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you; I will praise your name,
for you have done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the foreigners’ palace is a city no more;
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.
For you have been a stronghold to the poor,
a stronghold to the needy in his distress,
a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat;
for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall,
like heat in a dry place.
You subdue the noise of the foreigners;
as heat by the shade of a cloud,
so the song of the ruthless is put down.

Notice how Isaiah’s description moves from God’s action–“You have made the city a heap”–to His character: “For You have been a stronghold to the poor.” And just in case we don’t get the picture the first time, Isaiah repeats it:

For you have been a stronghold to the poor,
a stronghold to the needy in his distress,
a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat;

As I frequently tell my students when we work with poetry, repetition is one of the most powerful tools that the poet has. In Hebrew poetry, we regularly see what appears to be simple restatement but is actually amplification of an idea or image. God is a stronghold, a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy, a shelter from the storm. It’s hard to miss the image when it’s repeated like this. And when we contrast this picture of God as stronghold with the picture of the city in a heap, “the fortified city a ruin,” we see that God is powerful, safe, and secure.

I love this passage, both because of its vivid images and for what it tells me of God. I see here a God who cares for His people, protects them and defends them. I also see that He uses His strength on their behalf to defeat their enemies. And so I come away from this passage confident in God’s care for me–my trust in God has been strengthened.

When I see that God cares for His people in this way, I can understand why Isaiah declares just a few verses later in chapter 26 that God keeps in perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on Him. Just after that, Isaiah tell us, “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock” (26:4).

Does trust come all in an instant? Does peace descend immediately? Usually not. It’s a process of growth, but it’s one that I can help along. I do have a choice in what I think about, where my mind is stayed and fixed. And I do have the ability to know God more fully–to see Him as worthy of my trust–by reading and meditating on His Word. Next time, I’ll share some passages that have strengthened my understanding of God and so strengthened my peace and my trust.

Tagged as: God, God's character, Isaiah, knowing-God, peace, problem, stronghold, trust