“The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” — Romans 8:6 NIV

Sister Eva was a Catholic nun and a hospital chaplain whom I worked with for several years before she retired. She was fond of saying to me and the other chaplains, Don’t lose your peace. Whenever one of us returned from a particularly difficult visit with troubling circumstances, she would gently remind us, Don’t lose your peace.

It took me awhile to really grasp what she meant, but then it hit me that I needed to guard my mind and not allow the external experiences to govern my internal contentment. Sometimes when Sister Eva would say, Don’t lose your peace, she would add, Don’t allow other peoples’ circumstances to rob you of the peace God gives you. It occurred to me that there was nothing wrong in feeling another’s sorrow and recognizing the sadness in the circumstances of trauma or death, but in that not to lose peace.

There is an old adage that says, We become what we think about. It’s true. When we fix our mind on the things that trouble us all we’ll get is discontentment. However, when we think about things in light of the Spirit and God’s Word, we’ll have peace.