Parents, My peace I give to you. When I was growing up near a college campus during the hippy years, many times people wearing hippy cool tie-dyed clothes would hold up two fingers and say “peace man!” Peace signs were drawn on street signs and notebook covers. People carried signs saying, “Peace Now!” Many were in psychedelic colors and designs influenced by the culture of the time. Some peace symbols were superimposed on yellow happy faces. What I knew of peace at that time was playing quietly with a Hot Wheels car, sitting on the hardwood floor with a full tummy, clothes on my body, and not a care in the world. Sunshine streamed in the window with a warm beam that danced when the shadows of the leaves of the large oaks that surrounded my childhood home blew in the early Summer breeze. I was embraced by the warmth of the Sun and the hardwood floor that accepted, then radiated the solar heat like being swaddled in a blanket right out of the dryer. There was a feeling of undisturbed security and safety from whatever dangers were “out there.” Some nights though, I struggled to sleep peacefully and frequently "sleep walked". Once, I went all the way to the car, locked all the doors, ready for a ride to somewhere. My parents, who happened to still be awake, had followed me outside to see where I would go. When my ride was apparently over, I climbed out of the car and went back to my bed. Many mornings I would wake up on a cold couch in the basement rather than the bed I had been tucked into the night before. But on warm, sunshiny, East Tennessee days, I felt it… peace. This peace was temporary though, it was challenged by the circumstances I saw on a black and white TV, the goings on in the world in the 1960’s and 70’s with assassinations, political and racial unrest, Viet Nam, Watergate and the oil crisis… Some days, I was drawn to the television when a North Carolina, Southern speaking preacher named Billy Graham would be broadcast from an evangelistic crusade somewhere. (I even watched a broadcast from my hometown of Knoxville in 1970, in our beloved Neyland Stadium, though apparently Richard Nixon tried to hijack the event for political gain after agreeing to say nothing political)… I sometimes sat and watched the broadcast by myself. There was always a peace that came in Graham’s urging to follow Jesus Christ. He talked about God’s love for us and God’s desire for us to connect our lives with Him. “Just As I Am” would be sung, led by George Beverly Shea and cameras captured thousands of people responding to the Gospel of Peace, the Good News of Jesus Christ. I often responded right then and there in my own house, praying as I watched the television. A sense of love and peace would overwhelm me like the sunshine that streamed into my window, but it embraced me and warmed me deeper than the Sun ever could. That peace, that shalom, remains when I remember that I belong to Jesus, that I am His and He is the Prince of Peace regardless of the unpeaceful things going on around me. Years later, as a pastor in Nashville in 2000, I had the privilege of taking my family and congregation to the Billy Graham crusade to hear Him in person. Once again, thousands responded to God’s Gospel of Peace including my daughter. We were all reminded of that peace on 9/11 the next year.
