Passing The Peace

Passing the Peace

You will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:7

Every serious golfer knows the name Paul Azinger. Azinger, also known as “Zinger,” won eleven tournaments on the PGA Tour. In 1993 he was on top of his game, but he was also diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the end of the season. His treatment included six months of chemotherapy and five weeks of radiation. Paul and his wife, Toni, have been married since 1982, and they battled his cancer together. But both say they could not have made it without their Christian faith.

“I can honestly say I never said, ‘Why me?’ he has said. “There are two ways you can react to something like this. You can say, ‘Why me, God? Why me?’ Or you can do an about-face and run to God and cling to him for your security and your hope. That’s what I did.”^a

Azinger’s faith was evident to many, including PGA colleague Payne Stewart. Payne himself made a passionate commitment to Christ later in life; during those latter years he often spoke of his Christian fellowship group and wore a WWJD bracelet that his son gave him.

Shortly after winning the US Open in 1999, Stewart was up early in the morning fixing pancakes for the family. After breakfast, he kissed his wife, Tracey, and their children good-bye. Later that morning he boarded a private plane headed for Texas that mysteriously veered off course and ended up crashing in South Dakota. Though the force of the crash obliterated the plane and much else, the National Transportation Safety Board found several items intact. These included Payne’s wedding ring, a gold pendant he had worn on a chain around his neck since his engagement in 1981, and amazingly, the WWJD bracelet.

A close friend of Payne’s, Paul Azinger spoke at the funeral to the three thousand people and the millions watching on television: “Payne Stewart has finished the race, he has kept the faith, and now the crown of righteousness is his. Payne Stewart loved life and loved people. . . . During this past year, everyone who knew Payne Stewart saw this dramatic change in his life. They saw in Payne what the Bible calls a ‘peace which passes all understanding.’ Only God can do that, because only God can change a heart.”

And only God can sustain your marriage through trials like cancer, the loss of a loved one, or whatever else you may face. Take a moment to review the early and recent years of your marriage, and relive times when you experienced a deep peace in the midst of unsettling circumstances. If you find that you can’t relate to such a peace, reflect on why that might be.

The peace I have now is so wonderful. I don’t understand how I lived so long without it.

—Payne Stewart

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