Chase The Kangaroo

How peace is strengthened in quiet moments and carried into a restless world.

The second week of Advent arrives without asking whether we are ready for it. The calendar is already full, the inbox already moving faster than anyone can keep up with, and December has a way of turning even ordinary days into a tight knot of errands, expectations, and background anxiety. Peace sounds good in theory, but we usually imagine it as distance: a quiet room, a rare morning, a moment without demands.

Yet Advent refuses to let peace be a retreat.

Jesus said, “My peace I give to you, not as the world gives” ~ John 14:27.

That one line snaps the world’s definition in half. Peace is not the absence of noise. It is the presence of Christ in the middle of it. Advent teaches us to look for the steady center that holds while everything around us keeps shifting. This is not escapist calm or seasonal sentiment. It is something older and stronger. It is the kind of peace that can stand in a crowded parking lot or sit in a difficult conversation without losing its footing.

The Noise We Call Normal

December makes a strange promise. If we can get enough done, buy the right things, plan perfectly, then the season will finally feel peaceful. It never works. The more we chase control, the more it slips. The world’s peace depends on circumstances. Silence the house, quiet the phone, finish the list. Since those conditions rarely arrive, peace becomes something we postpone.

The prophet Isaiah offers a clearer vision:

“For to us a child is born … and his name shall be called Prince of Peace” ~ Isaiah 9:6.

Not the prince of quiet evenings. The Prince of Peace.

The One who brings right order into a disordered world.

There are counterfeits we settle for. We numb ourselves with screens. We over-plan to mask uncertainty. We stay busy so we do not have to feel the deeper ache beneath the surface.

Augustine of Hippo once wrote, “Peace is the tranquility of order.” He meant that peace comes when life is rightly ordered under God, not when life finally becomes easy. That truth stands firm against every modern distraction. Real peace enters the life you already have and steadies it from within.

Peace as Presence, Not Escape

Scripture never treats peace as a mood. It treats peace as a reality made possible by God.

Zechariah said God would “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). Peace is a path. It is learned by walking with God, not by escaping life. Paul the Apostle takes it further: “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Peace begins in reconciliation. It becomes the settled assurance that we are held by Someone who does not lose His grip.

C. S. Lewis pressed into this idea when he wrote, “We are living in a world of rebels who must lay down their arms.” True peace requires a surrender of the inner war. The work is internal before it is external.

This is why biblical peace does not collapse under pressure. Circumstances shift. Demands rise. Christ remains.

Resistance Training for the Soul

If peace is this strong, then how do we learn to carry it? Not by waiting for the world to calm down. That will not happen. We learn it the same way strength is learned: through repetition and practice, through small steady acts that build capacity.

This is where silence plays a role. Not as the goal, but as the training environment.

A moment of quiet is not peace any more than a gym is the real battlefield. But silence strengthens what chaos will eventually test. In stillness, even for a few minutes, we see our restlessness rise. We see how quickly the mind jumps. We see how deeply control has shaped our habits. In that small quiet, we practice breathing slower. We practice releasing what we cannot command. We practice recognizing God’s nearness.

Henri Nouwen once wrote, “The place of peace is the place of surrender and trust.”

Silence becomes the small space where trust is practiced, so it can be lived later.

Silence is resistance training for the soul.

The point is not the silence.

The point is the strength you carry back into real life.

Even ten unhurried breaths in a quiet corner can become the reason your voice stays gentle later in the day. Even three minutes of stillness in the morning can become the anchor you draw from when the afternoon unravels.

Peace is practiced long before it is tested.

Practicing Peace with a Body and a Day

Advent peace is embodied. It shows up in how we walk, breathe, answer, and pay attention.

• Breathe once before you speak. The simple act slows the reaction and steadies the heart.
• Choose a single quiet place in the house. Not as escape, but as training.
• Walk without your phone. Let your senses remind you that the world is larger than your attention stream.
• End the day with a small ritual. A candle, a prayer, a short reading. A repeated act helps the soul unclench.

Thomas Aquinas noted that peace requires “a twofold union: of the appetites within themselves and of one person with another.” In other words, peace is interior alignment that shapes outward gentleness. It is not a technique. It is a posture strengthened over time.

You do not drift into peace. You train into it.

Peace in Motion

By the end of Week Two, the world will not have become more peaceful. Your schedule will likely be the same. But something in you can grow steadier. You can walk through the same crowds with a calmer step. You can sit in the same meetings without the same tightness in your chest. You can move through your days as someone who carries peace instead of someone who waits for peace to appear.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer captured the truth simply: “The peace of God is not escape from reality but a return to the reality of God.”

That is the heart of Advent. The Prince of Peace enters the real world, not an ideal one. He walks into the noise and invites us to do the same.

May this week train you for the life you already have.
May the small places of quiet strengthen you.
May Christ steady your steps.
And may you discover the kind of peace that does not depend on silence, but can walk straight through the noise and remain unshaken.