The Peace That Stands Guard

Paul had written to his friends in Philippi about the King who climbed down, and now his letter was nearly finished. He was still under guard in Rome. (The soldiers took turns. Every few hours a fresh one clanked in and the tired one clanked out.)

Paul did not know how his trial would end. Caesar might set him free. Caesar might have him killed.

The church in Philippi had troubles of its own. People in their town were against them. And Epaphroditus, the friend they had sent to Rome with a gift of money for Paul, had fallen so sick that he nearly died. God had mercy, he got well, and now he would carry Paul's letter home.

So Paul wrote the part they needed most.

"Rejoice in the Lord always!" he wrote. "I will say it again: rejoice!"

That was a bold thing for a man in chains to write. But the Philippians knew Paul. Years before, he and Silas had been beaten and locked in the Philippi jail with their feet clamped in wooden stocks, and at midnight they had sung hymns to God while the other prisoners listened. (That was also the night of the earthquake. Paul's singing was hard to forget.)

"Let everyone see how gentle you are," Paul went on. "The Lord is near. Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him while you ask."

Then came the sentence that fit his own room best. "And the peace of God, which is bigger than anything we can understand, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Guard was a soldier's word. (Philippi was a Roman town full of old soldiers who had retired there, so everyone who heard the letter knew what a guard on watch looked like.) Paul had one sitting right beside him. God's peace, he was saying, would stand at the door of their hearts and keep the worries from barging in, the way a sentry turns strangers back at a gate.

"Whatever is true," Paul wrote, "whatever is right and pure and lovely, think about those things."

Then he wrote about the gift Epaphroditus had brought. "The Lord has made me so glad, because you thought of me again," he wrote. "I am not saying this because I am in need. I have learned to be content whatever happens. I know what it is to be hungry, and I know what it is to have plenty. I can do all things through him who gives me strength."

(He did not mean he could snap the chain or lift the prison off its foundations. He meant that hungry or full, chained or free, he could face it, because Jesus kept giving him the strength.)

Paul's guards changed every few hours. They yawned and went home to supper, and not one of them could keep a worry out of anybody. Paul himself was one man on a chain, a long way from Philippi.

But Epaphroditus carried the letter home, and church after church copied it, and the peace Paul wrote about kept moving into new houses. It had never been Paul's peace. It belonged to the one Paul said was near. Soldiers had once tied his hands and led him away, and soldiers had once sat outside his tomb, and on the third day they could not keep him in. Now Jesus keeps watch over his people wherever they are, and he never yawns and goes home to supper.