Experiencing God's peace, by Bishop caryle hughes

Read more from the Diocese. Read here.
As the busy season of fall approaches, Bishop Hughes calls us to pause, to listen, and to rest in the words: “Be still and know that I am God.”

Read the transcript.
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark, and I want to talk with you as this summer comes to a close about peace. And specifically, it’s the peace that comes when we know that God is with us. In the letters, in the epistles, you’ll hear Paul talk about it as the peace that passes all understanding. One of our blessings in the church offers the peace that passes all understanding. It’s this sense of peace that sometimes doesn’t make sense. As things swirl around us, we feel peace. Or it’s a sense of peace that comes even if things aren’t swirling, if we’re just kind of going about our life, and we have this great sense of knowing that all is well. And it may not be because we have our hands all over it, making things perfect, but we just know that all is well. It’s a peace that comes when we know that God is present with us.
Many people talk about feeling that sense of peace in church, specifically as they receive Communion, or if someone lays hands on them and says a prayer for them, that they feel a great sense of peace from that. I do remember there was a person that I served with on an altar guild, Celeste, and she always said that her moments of preparing things for the service were moments that were so full of peace and so full of God’s presence, that those were the holiest moments of her week. It wasn’t the worship, it wasn’t all the other things. It was those moments preparing for worship, for everybody else, for the rest of the church to be in worship together. So that sense of peace comes in many, many different ways, but it’s a peace that God means for us to have. God means for us to have that sense of confidence in God’s presence.
I’ve been thinking about Psalm 46 – that’s a psalm that meant a lot to us in the diocese, I shared it quite frequently with people, particularly during those intense years of Covid – and the psalm starts off saying that God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in a time of trouble. And of course, that made sense to us. We were in trouble. We were trying to figure out, how do we do church now? How do we keep ourselves safe? What does work look like going forward? How do we get children educated? What does school look like when it’s all on Zoom? We had things that were vexing and confusing to us, that we were trying to work through. And so those words tha,t that God is a refuge and strength and a very present help in a time of trouble, meant so much to us. There’s words too at the end of that psalm. So when we hear that God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in a time of trouble, those are words that the psalmist uses and that we use, where we describe who God is to us. But the end of the psalm moves to God’s point of view, where God speaks directly to us and says, this God who’s ever present to us in times of trouble, God speaks directly to us and says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
And as we close out summer and move into that busier time of year that will start after Labor Day weekend is over, I want us to remember these words and to live into them, to be still and know that there is God. To be still and know that God is with us. That God said those words specifically for us through the psalmist, those words to help us remember who God is: “Be still and know that I am God.” If you could find a time, any time in your day – take a minute if that is all you have – one minute to sit in silence and say those words to yourself from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God,” and allow God’s peace to surround you after you say those words. That that sense of peace is not a peace that is relegated simply to feeling saved in a moment of trouble by God, nor is it relegated simply to being in church on a Sunday morning or receiving Communion. That that sense of peace can come to you at any time when you’re in the presence of God.
So take the time, whether your silence is for a minute, or five minutes, or half an hour, or an hour, take some time in silence and be still and know that God is with you.