Undisturbed and undisturbable calm

I have been privileged to be at some big places in this world.  I have hiked in the Rocky Mountains, amidst the peaks that reach 16,000 feet high and meld seamlessly into the clouds above.  I have been in the middle of the Great Plains, in the middle of waving cornfields stretch far beyond what the eye can see.  I have even stood on the Great Wall of China, that superstructure that crosses nearly 1500 miles of Asia.

I spent the past weekend on an island off the Caribbean coast.  And I remembered, there is perhaps no place where I feel quite as small as at the edge of the ocean.  Nearly the entire time we were at the beach it was overcast, if not downright stormy.  Certainly I feel even more small when the horizon is increasingly dark and ominous. 

The October 20 reading from Streams in the Desert included this by Arthur Tappan Pierson-

"The peace of God is an eternal calm like the cushion of the sea.  It lies so deeply within the human heart that no external difficulty or disturbance can reach it.  And anyone who enters the presence of God becomes a partaker of that undisturbed and undisturbable calm."

Why does it sometimes seem so rare, even when I know the peace of God?

I know that is where I want to be- "a partaker of that undisturbed and undisturbable calm."

Far, far away, the roars of strife fall silent,
And loving thoughts rise ever peacefully,
And no storm, however fierce and violent,
Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

(photo credit:  Tortuguero, Costa Rica)