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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"The peace of God which passeth all understanding." - Philippians 4:7.
It is possible that by the peace of God is here meant the friendship, the amity of God. To get anything like a conception of the peace of God, it is needful to know the barrier of enmity once existing between you and God. We may view the barrier which you erected around yourself to hinder God from approaching you, to exclude his messengers, his word, the voice of his providence, his law, his summons to judgment, every remembrancer of him. Or, we may contemplate the tremendous rampart, higher than the highest heaven, deeper than the lowest hell, built by the perfections of God around his inviolable majesty, forbidding every transgressor even to look upon him; of which not the combined force of all angels within, or of all devils without, would ever have removed one stone. But this mighty middle wall of partition, Christ, designated the Breaker, hath pierced with gateways, adorned with gates of pearl; and every several stone, once breathing defiance, is now made transparent for the smile of God to come through to you, and for the vision of your everlasting inheritance to stream upon you. Truly such a peace as this absolute peace between the most Holy One and you, a once rebellious worm, passeth understanding. This amity is not a merely negative thing, not merely the removal of wrath. This peace of God is like music. Harmony is the perfection of sound, not the absence of sound. The return to the soul of God, in peace, leads at once to an ineffable discourse, a melodious commerce of the two spirits finite and infinite. And not only so; but this peace begets another peace (if it be another) between the various souls thus reconciled to God. They are so brought together in harmony that a marvelous correspondence of love spontaneously commences. Separated formerly by a multitude of individual interests, they now love one another in fervor and purity. There is a harmony in the different powers and appetites of the individual soul. There is peace within; peace with God, peace with the people of God. This spiritual music beginning at the throne of God and flowing through all godly souls in heaven and in earth, and returning to the great source again, is by the unreconciled unheard, unsuspected; it passeth understanding.
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