The Prophet Isaiah offers helpful advice for us as we strive to live with a modicum of peace in the strange and confusing world in which we live. “Be strong, do not fear!” I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we find that place of peace, strength, and fearlessness in this tumultuous world.
Each 24-hour news cycle seems to bring to the fore new shocks, scandals, disasters, dire warnings, and fears. Those thoughts of mine about the search for peace were heightened by receiving an invitation to offer an article on Ignatian spirituality for a world in flux.
Flux! That word takes me back to my initial encounter with Heraclitus of Ephesus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He was noted for his strong insistence on ever-present change as being the fundamental essence of the universe. This is summed up in the line famously offered in his writing: “No one ever steps in the same river twice,” the point being that the river keeps moving along.