In early August, while the girls were at camp, I spent a lot of uninterrupted time with Tessie-cat. At almost-19 years, she’s even older (in cat years) than I am. I call her “my geriatric cat,” which is what she is. All she did for the whole week was to sit on the back on the couch, in her favorite spot, and sleep, taking brief breaks to eat or pee or poop or remind me that she depends on me for everything, including attention. After so many years, when it comes to our relationship, she’s really still just a kitten.

And during this time we had to spend together, a truth acutely implanted itself on my consciousness, that no relationship lasts forever, because all creatures die, for one reason or another, and probably far too soon. My relationship with Tessie, I thought, will eventually end as well, and probably not too many years hence.

A thought like that really puts in perspective how annoyed I get at her when she begs and begs and begs for attention, at the most inconvenient opportunities.

Note: This post is an extended version of the comments I made at church a couple weeks ago.

Many of us have heard of the “peace that transcends all understanding,” from one of the most famous snippets of the New Testament: “and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds…” (Philippians 4:7)

But I don’t know that we have a realistic conception of what that “peace” is. It’s not “peace and quiet,” as we often think in English. Not an inner calm, well not directly, anyhow. It can overlap with “peace and quiet,” because if you’re at peace, you’re not in turmoil. But most of the time in the Bible, when you read “peace,” it usually refers to something slightly different than “peace and quiet.”

The words of the chorus are based on an old Hebrew prayer: Establish peace, goodness, and blessing, grace and kindness and compassion, upon us and upon all Israel, your people.

He turned it into a song for peace for the world: