Under the Carpenter’s Measure

Peace does not arrive with fanfare.
It comes as a thin thread in the hand—
easily broken, easily ignored—
yet strong enough to pull a life
back from the edges.

I have learned this:
the heart fractures long before the voice does.
A quiet judgment here,
a hurried assumption there,
the beam settling into the eye
one splinter at a time
until I cannot see
even the shape of my own shadow.

We think peace is soft,
but it is carved from harder wood
than the planks we raise
between ourselves and others.
It asks for honesty—
the kind that goes looking
under the floorboards of motive
and finds the hammer still warm
from where we shaped our opinions
too quickly.

Some people break easily.
Some break others without noticing.
Some carry histories like jars—
hairline fractures running beneath the glaze,
invisible until the weight of a single word
makes the whole vessel tremble.

And Christ whispers,
“Judge not according to appearance.”
His words fall like water
in the marketplaces of the mind,
washing dust from the places
where I mistook my clarity
for righteousness.

Sometimes peace is a conversation.
Sometimes it is a boundary.
Sometimes it is a silence
held softly enough
not to cut the one who needs it.
Sometimes it is leaving—
not in anger,
but in obedience
to the One who walked away from Nazareth
without bitterness clinging to His sandals.

Peace is never accidental.
It is the narrow path
between speaking truth
and breaking bruised reeds.
It is the stillness required
to hear the difference.

And if I must walk alone for a season,
let it be with clean hands—
hands that have dropped the stones,
hands that know the weight of mercy
and refuse to throw it.

For the Carpenter still stoops in the dust.
He still reaches for the shards
we hide behind our certainty.
He still invites us
to exchange the pieces we’ve collected
for the peace He keeps—
whole, steady,
unbroken.

And if peace lives in me at all,
it lives because His yoke
sits gentle on my shoulders
and His voice
quiets the places inside me
that once splintered so easily.

If this poem stirred something in your heart, remember that the deepest roots grow from God’s Word itself. “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11). If you’d like simple, practical help in tucking Scripture into memory…

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