“When there’s no peace on earth, there is peace in Christ…”
As an LDS Church employee, I get to do a lot of cool things. Elders Holland, Christofferson, and Rasband are executive directors over my department, the Priesthood and Family Department, and every once in a while I get to be in meetings with them. It’s really cool to see them in action, outside of General Conference. I also get to work with the Young Men and Young Women presidencies, especially on the Mutual Theme project.
As the Church’s Youth Music Manager, I get to sit in on their meetings when they talk about the next year’s Mutual theme, and the messages they want to get across to the youth. They travel the world and meet LDS youth from every walk of life, so they know what the youth need.
In one of those meetings, they were discussing the Peace in Christ theme. They talked about how there was so much chaos in the world, but we can always find that quiet place, the internal peace that we all want, if we rely on and follow Christ. They asked me if I could capture that in a song.
Some of you may think it’s easy to write a song. Sometimes that is true. Other times it takes me months to come up with something that really works. When it’s right, I know it. I probably came up with five or six song choruses or ideas, but nothing was really working for me. Then I listened to some music, that usually helps me get in a different space, musically. I have always loved the song Jealous, by Labrinth. After listening to it, I came up with a melodic hook that I liked. The more I worked on it, the more I liked it. I knew that this was the idea I was looking for when I came up with the line, “when there’s no peace on earth, there is peace in Christ.” It just felt right.
I don’t know why, but this song has resonated more with people than any other song I’ve written. Maybe it’s the simple, yet important message…
Christ really is always there for us, and He will give us His peace if we “learn of (Him), listen to (his) words, and walk in the meekness of (His) spirit.”
Also, if you’re interested, here’s a playlist of voice memos I made when I was creating Peace in Christ. It’s interesting to see how different some of the ideas were.