The Yearning

The Acts collection - October 21st, 2022 (6-minute read)

As I set about the task of writing this article about peace, something unexpected happened. The more I tried to stand up the gift of peace alone and unpack it into meaningful writing, the harder it was to separate peace from joy and patience. There was a special relationship between those three gifts. Peace seemed like a child who doesn’t want to go somewhere unless she can bring her two best friends with her.

Then that small voice reminded me that joy, peace and patience were gifts that God has already given to every Christian. If we don’t have those gifts in our lives, it’s because we have lost them. That led to an unexpected conclusion that illustrated the relationship between the three spiritual gifts. Those three gifts really do go together because when one goes away, the other two are seldom far behind in leaving us.

So, I decided to focus this article on how to guard and keep these three gifts in our 21st century world. I began sorting out all the things that can make people unha…