Colossians 3:15: The Peace That Decides

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

Colossians 3:15 (NIV)

The Peace That Decides

By seven the corn is knee high and still wet, and the four of them are well into the rows. The oldest boy is fast and sloppy and keeps getting told about it. The mother took the hard end of the field because she’s the only one who will. Between the rows they argue about who left the gate open and whether this is the fifth row or the sixth. None of them is going anywhere else today, and the arguing has a different shape because of that.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Peace between separate people can be arranged with distance. A body has none to arrange with. So the peace Christ gives gets the deciding vote when two who belong to each other are at odds, and being thankful for them is part of the same instruction.

For a long time I read this verse as advice for my own nerves. I read it now as something said to more than one person at a time.

Paul says it to a church, and a house is the smallest room it reaches. If the peace of Christ had the deciding vote in your house, what would it settle first?

Somebody has to let the ruling stand. It costs whoever is surest they’re right, in front of an audience that knows them well. The agreement comes later, if it comes at all. Thankfulness runs thin at the exact moment the other person is wrong, and the call stands anyway, for people God put in one body with you and never asked you to choose.

At the end of the fourth row the father stops, leans on the hoe, and says he’s sorry about last night. The oldest boy keeps hoeing. Two rows over the mother says she heard him, and that it was the fifth row after all.