Peace in His Presence
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him… Psalm 37:7, ESV
While on our trip to Italy, we ran into so many different circumstances that brought us into complete reliance on God. I realized I kept getting the same message over and over, “Be patient and wait on the Lord.” Listen, we know God hears us: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15, ESV). While we know this to be true, in almost every situation where we had the opportunity to be patient, we reacted instead of waiting for God’s amazing answers to arrive.
My husband and I were in Italy during a taxi strike, which meant we had to find other means of transportation to get to the airport from the train station. I had read somewhere that there was a tram you could take to get there.
When we arrived in Florence, there was massive confusion. Travelers were left stranded, not knowing what to do. We asked several employees where we could find the train to the airport. I don’t think our Italian was good enough to get the information we needed because we kept hearing that there was no train to the airport. After much frustration we realized it was not called a train but a tram. When we finally did get the right information we headed to catch the tram and everyone was there. Due to the taxi strike, the tram was full. The line was extremely long and people were a bit impatient.
We waited for about thirty minutes and finally the tram came. There was a mad rush of people trying to get on. I headed toward the doors with two suitcases and my husband had the other two with him. When I looked back to check on him, he had stopped to look for our tickets. He couldn't remember where he had put them. While he was searching his pockets, the tram took off. I could feel my spirit saying “Stay calm, he does not need you to react right now!”
At least this time we were at the front of the line and knew exactly where to stand. Three different trams came by as we waited, but none of them were headed to the airport. While waiting it started to lightly rain but it was warm outside, so we were okay. Soon the rain became very heavy. The wind started blowing and we were getting soaked. We ran for shelter and bought a cheap umbrella from someone who was selling them on the street. At this point, we had waited over ninety minutes since the first tram that we missed. We started hearing that something had happened on the tracks and there would be no more trams to the airport that day. We prayed and asked God for direction.
My husband called the car rental place to see if they could pick us up, but they could not. He then spoke to a police officer who said that a tram to the airport was on its way. We waited another twenty minutes and a new tram came, but it was not going to the airport. We asked the driver if there was going to be another tram to the airport and she said no. She said her tram was the last one and that we should get on. She said we could take it to her last stop for the day and catch the bus to the airport from there, so we did. When we arrived at the bus stop there was a long line.
After waiting about ten minutes an officer came by and said that a tram to the airport was on its way. We all abandoned the line for the bus and moved quickly back to the tram stop to catch it. The tram finally came, just like the Officer said, but now it was full of all the people we left at the first stop! We pushed our luggage on and stood for most of the trip. Had we listened, we would have been sitting in a comfortable seat. We finally made it to the airport three hours after arriving in Florence.
In hindsight, God showed me that we had prayed for direction, and we were right where we needed to be the entire time. We had received the answer from an authority we could trust but we doubted when presented with another option. Had we just been patient and listened to the one with authority, we could have avoided so much headache.
Sometimes it is hard to know when to move and when to stay still when things are out of our immediate control. We prayed and asked God for direction but we were still trying to find an answer on our own. If we can take a deep breath and just wait for peace, the Holy Spirit will guide us in the way we should go. Satan is very good at prompting us to move in the direction of our feelings when things are chaotic. We often can’t tell through the fog of emotions if we are moving in ourselves or moving with God.
When we accepted Christ as our savior we received the gift of peace, the peace that passes all understanding. We have to allow the Holy Spirit to move us to that Jehovah Shalom peace. Then we will know the right path to take.
Affirmations: Matthew 10:20; Luke 24:32; Ephesians 6:19, Isaiah 55:11
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