Shalom

Shalom

The peace I give is a gift the world cannot give.

John 14:27

I love the word peace. It captures the way I feel standing on the shores of Lake Michigan or the relief that comes from a great massage or the comfort I feel knowing my children are safe. Even so, the word itself begins to look rather plain, more like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters than Cinderella herself, when you start comparing it to the Hebrew word shalom. Why? Because shalom far outshines it, containing, as it does, ideas of calm, completion, harmony, wholeness, healing, wellness, perfection, safety, soundness, success, prosperity. When there is shalom, life is as it should be. We are as we should be. Nothing is off kilter. To taste shalom is to taste paradise. It is to touch the life God intended us to have.

We know, of course, that this original shalom has been shattered by sin. Instead of shalom, myriad evils have entered our world. Fortunately, God has no intention of giving up on his original idea of creating a world full of peace. Instead, he sent his Son to make a costly sacrifice in order to restore the peace, which is why Paul spoke to the Romans, saying, “‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace” (Romans 10:15, NKJV).

This year as you focus on becoming a woman at peace, don’t settle for less than God intends to give you. Ask him to show you the things that make for true shalom. The peace you long for, the peace God promises, will only be fully established when Jesus comes again. But even now, those of us who belong to him can grow in our experience of his promised peace. To quote Etty Hillesum, a woman who perished in a Nazi death camp during World War II, “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”^a

Father, I pray that you will show me the way to peace. Help me grow in shalom as I seek to follow you. And as I do, help me spread your peace to others.

^a Etty Hillesum, The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002), 535–36.