What we all need more of

We drove to Raleigh early yesterday for the Science Olympiad State contest. I wanted to show Asherel the Chapel Hill campus, start her thinking about the flavor of different colleges. She could not really understand why we were doing this 3 years or so before she had to think about college, but she plodded along without quite the enthusiasm I might have liked. Until we hit the Chapel Hill funky little boutiques. Then she came alive. There were oodles of "vintage" shops, filled with the clothes, jewelry, shoes, bell bottom jeans and fringy things that I wore when I was a teen. I remember thinking I was as cool as cool gets wearing my bell bottom jeans with orange pompoms dangling all along the hem. All that wild stuff is coming back in style. Well maybe not the orange pompon fringe....Anyway, Asherel was already wearing her John Lennon sunglasses I got her in Las Vegas. She found a peace symbol necklace, a steal at $6. It completed her vintage 60s outfit she was wearing, complete with bandana and the ever present Beatles T-shirt. So I think she wants to go to the University at Chapel Hill now, just so she can prowl the cool little vintage shops.

The contest starts this morning, and I am so happy to soon be saying goodbye to helicopters and trebuchets. For two years now, I have coached those events, and I think I have sucked out all I ever need to know about either of those things. I hope she does really well, but I think she already has gotten more out of the trip than she had hoped for. The peace necklace is really quite striking.

It is a good symbol, and one we all should hang around our necks. Of all the things that Jesus could have given, as He was preparing to leave His disciples on their own, Peace was what He knew they needed to hold in their hearts. He knew they were frightened, that they were unsure they could manage without Him, that their hearts were troubled. He could have left them a pile of money, a squadron of soldiers, a bottomless glass of pink lemonade....but instead, He leaves them what He knows they most need. He leaves them Peace.

Peace be with you.

John 14:27
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

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