The Marvelous Peace of God

Follow me and I will make you fish for people. Mark 1. 14 - 20

This hymn haunts me. William Alexander Percy, lawyer, planter, poet wrote the words with what is clearly a true understanding of the cost of discipleship. Today we read Mark's gospel story of Jesus' call to Simon and Andrew and James and John.

"Such happy simple fisher folks, before the Lord came down." They worked with their brothers, father, friends and had a simple little life until the Call came. What did Jesus say that enticed them to drop everything and go?

And so they went...and the peace of God "filled their hearts Brimful, and broke them too." What kind of peace is that? Percy goes on the describe how answering the call led to their gruesome deaths, John homeless, exiled in Patmos and Peter upside down on a cross. And then the last line, the most haunting of all says,

"The peace of God, it is no peace, But strife closed in the sod./Yet brothers pray for but one thing- the marvelous peace of God."

There is in God's call a promise of peace that passses all understanding. The work is hard and painful, and yet there is a peace that prevails, that makes no human sense, does not exist in chronos time and "costs nothing less than everything," as Bonhoeffer said...that marvelous peace of God.