​The rest stop was full.  But I’d driven as far as I could for the day.  I have to stop somewhere.  So I parked on the shoulder of the off-ramp.
I was exhausted.  A little bit of winding down, and sleep came pretty easily.  The noise of the traffic going by hardly reached my ears.  But now I’m awake, the sun is coming up, and the noise gets louder and louder.  It’s hard to believe that tires on asphalt can be so loud.
I know there’s a measurement called decibel.  But I don’t know how to quantify that.  If I hear an explosion I know that it’s a lot of decibels.  If I hear a whisper, indeed if I could hear a whisper, I’d know it was very few decibels.
I sit here thinking about my family and all the people who rush about everyday.  I wonder if there is a decibel measurement for anxiety.  I’m thinking about the anxiety called desire, or greed.  While the world sleeps, there’s a few who make those anxious noises.  But on the whole, it’s barely more than a whisper in this world.  If greed wasn’t quieted down during the night no one would sleep.
Then I wonder something useful.  Does man even know what peace is?  Only Adam and Eve knew peace.  Apparently that didn’t last very long  Days, months, years, decades, who knows?  I don’t know for sure, perhaps it lasted more than a hundred years.  But once peace was gone, it is as though it never existed among us at all.  And the proof of it’s leaving lay in the ground with their son Abel.  And the proof of their realization ran down their cheeks as tears.  Peace was forever gone, replaced by something new – horror.
Greed’s particular name that the time was Cain.  But his mindset goes about in this world today under the use of a billion different names.  Now, all we know is murder and chaos.  But you could easily refer to all of us as Cain.
Cain committed the first murder; The taking of life from his brother.  But I have committed murder.  Haven’t I taken away hope from hundreds of people?  In that sense, haven’t we all committed murder? 
In those days I was not peace and I did not know peace.  But ignorance is no excuse is it?  Once a life is shattered, how can any words of Man (or excuses) fill the void?  Whatever hope of peace and trust there was I ripped away with a rock called greed.  I guess we could say there’s a murder of death as well as the murder of life.  The latter, by the way, is legal in this place.
But let’s get back to the theme here .
Peace is an individual.  He withdrew from this place because of sin.  But he is peace.  He is not disturbed by the death of Abel.  And he is not disturbed by this wasting disease called sin.  And he is not disturbed by the volume of noise greed makes in this wicked place.  He is not disturbed by what we do.  In the blink of an eye he will shut it all down.  But he is very concerned to come and give us peace.  He is very concerned about teaching us how to stop murdering life.
We may get some quiet time from here and there.  But do we know He who is Peace?  I asked that because even while I sit among all this increasing noise,  my soul is not disquieted.  My body perceives the chaos.  But my soul is in his hands.  Where does your soul find itself today?  Do you know Peace?