The Umpire of Peace

There was an old man who used to call balls and strikes for the youth baseball league out at the community baseball field, back before anybody paid him a dime to do it. He wasn’t fast anymore. His knees had given up on him somewhere around the first Gulf War.

But he had one gift nobody argued with, and that was his voice. When two boys collided at second base and both benches came up hollering, he didn’t run over there and referee the shouting. He just called it. Safe or out. Done.

And here’s the thing that stuck with me. Once he called it, the argument had nowhere left to live. The peace didn’t come because everybody agreed. It came because somebody had the authority to end the argument, and everybody, grumbling or not, let him.

I think about that old umpire whenever I read what Paul wrote to the church at Colossae. He tells them to let the peace of God rule in their hearts, and the word he uses there, brabeuō, is the very same word you’d use for an umpire making the call. Not a suggestion. Not a vote. A ruling.

Paul is telling us that peace isn’t supposed to be one voice shouting among many in the chaos of our own minds. Peace is supposed to be the umpire. It’s supposed to have the final say.

Most of us don’t run our hearts that way. We let fear call the game. We let the last hard conversation call the game. We let the bill we can’t pay, or the diagnosis we didn’t expect, or the grudge we’ve been nursing since summer, step up to home plate and start making the rulings.

And we wonder why we’re worn out by nine in the morning. We’ve been letting the wrong umpire work our game.

There’s another story I heard once about a fistfight that broke out at a family reunion, two grown men, brothers, over something so old and so small neither one of them could tell you how it started.

Their mother, eighty-some years old, walked out onto that lawn with a dish towel still in her hand and said one sentence. “I didn’t raise you to hate each other.” That was it. She didn’t referee the argument point by point. She made a ruling.

And it landed on both of them the same way, because that’s what real peace does. Paul says we’re called to this peace “in one body.” It’s not a private peace you keep for yourself while everybody around you stays at war. It’s a peace that has to have enough grace in it to cover the person you’re still frustrated with.

And then Paul closes the verse the way an old preacher closes a service, with something plain and something true. Be ye thankful. Because a thankful heart is a hard place for chaos to set up camp. Gratitude doesn’t argue with fear. It just quietly takes up all the space fear was hoping to use.

So here’s what I’d ask you today. When your thoughts start arguing with each other, when your heart feels like two brothers going at it on the lawn, or a collision at second base, stop and let the real umpire step in.

Let His peace make the call. Not because the noise goes quiet on its own, but because you’ve handed the authority to Somebody who has already settled the game.

Today’s Bible Verse

“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.”

Colossians 3:15 (KJV)

Today’s Prayer

Lord, 

I thank You that Your peace is available to me right now. When my thoughts race or my heart feels troubled, help me to pause and let Your peace rule. Guide my emotions, protect my mind, and give me a spirit of true thankfulness for all You have done. In Jesus’ name, 

Amen.