REFLECTIONS

Shalom

“Shalom,” the stranger said. “Shalom,” my new boss answered in return. It was a day in September a few months after I had entered a new stage of life, in a new city, a new job, and now I would learn, into a new world. My adventure had only begun and exposure to Jewish customs added to the newness.

Shalom. I had no idea what it meant, but I sensed something warm and sincere. “It means peace,” my boss later explained. The definition sounded good enough for me, especially when I learned that the season on the Jewish calendar provided two unplanned holidays granted to this Christian boy by his Jewish employers. I liked that new word!

Shalom. The word lingered in my life over the years before I began to further grasp its meaning. Peace, the simple definition given me, seemed satisfying enough at the time even when my Jewish mentors tried to explain that Shalom expresses a broader wish for well-being than “peace” as we use it in English.

“Peace be with you,” we share sometimes with others during our worship services. We usually mean it to express a prayer for inner tranquility. On the world scene, we pray for peace on earth seeking absence of war. But as my understanding of the Hebrew word grows, I think “shalom” is a prayer for well-being—an unbroken circle of communal peace. Shalom. It mirrors the all-encompassing love in God’s kingdom.

Since Adam and Eve ate the apple and Cain took his brother’s life, shalom has been absent from this world. So, peacemaking is a role almost everyone is called to play at one time or another in our lives. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said. And yes, Jesus told us to turn the other cheek when we are slapped across the face. But turning the other cheek is an action step for peace, not a passive concession to the evil provoking it.

Shalom. Jesus taught us, “Love your enemies.” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and to “forgive up to seventy times seven.” Do those lessons not lead us to Shalom? And the Ten Commandments, don’t they spell out God’s recipe for Shalom?

Shalom—the all-encompassing circle of love in God’s kingdom. Shalom calls us to be salt and light to the world. Blessed are the peacemakers, they will be called the sons of God. So, even in the minuscule time and space we have in this world, we are blessed that, through Christ, God made us his ambassadors with the ministry of reconciliation.

Shalom…

You are the light of the world,

Richard +

www.reflectingthesavior.org.

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