I’m sitting next to a lake, watching a sunrise and waiting for peak color. I’m inside a warm truck, and though the wind is quite frigid, I’m warm when I’m inside. I spent the night in a hotel, and I have a job to go to this morning. I was able to shower this morning, in water that was safe to drink, and wouldn’t make me sick if I swallowed some on accident. I’ll get breakfast a bit later, and I might even have some sort of warm drink to chase away the chill.

I seemingly have everything I need around me to live a very peaceful life.

So even though yesterday was a mess, starting at 2 a.m. with a collision with 2 deer, and ending with perhaps one of the worst headaches I remember in my life, I can wake up this morning and face the day knowing that I am truly in a good place.

I woke up this morning and didn’t discover that the home next door had been destroyed by bombs in the night. I woke up this morning and didn’t discover that Boko Haram came in the night and abducted all of the school girls from my village. I woke up this morning and the Burmese army was not at my door, forcing me to leave. I woke up this morning, and will have food to eat, clothes to wear, and water to drink. Everything in my immediate view is just fine.

In all my travels, I have met many people who can’t say those things, who can’t say that everything is just fine around them. I have met people who make cookies out of dirt to sell in the market. (If you don’t believe me I’ll show you the video sometime.) I have met people who lay dying in their parents home of a cancer that couldn’t be treated by the local health system. I have met people who have lost everything they owned, and people they have loved in an earthquake. Everything in my view is not just fine.

So how do we wrestle with this peace around us, knowing there is not peace for others in the world? I have been writing about peace each December for 4 years, and at the end of this year, I will have written 100 different posts about peace, and I still am not sure. I still don’t know the answer.

That doesn’t mean I will stop looking.