Shalom. The Hebrew word that is most simply translated as peace, is a word of restoration and wholeness, that attends to body and soul, individual and society, heaven and earth. It is a word that the prophets, including Jeremiah, used to describe God’s intended future for God’s people. It is a word of promise spoken to people in ruinous situations, as in Jeremiah 29, when the Babylonian army had sacked Jerusalem and carried away every valuable item from the temple, along with many prisoners of war. “God has a plan in even this, a plan to restore to you a promising future and the hope you’ve lost,” Jeremiah told the people.
That often-cited verse from Jeremiah is now a welcome reminder to me that God is at work in, with, and under the visible stuff of my life, crafting in unseen mystery a future more whole and peace-filled than I’m able to imagine. Not with my help, but often despite my hindering it, God is restoring my life and the life of all creation to its intended rightness. Shalom.
This message is excerpted from “The promise of shalom” by Collette Broady Grund in the August 2014 Café online magazine. Today we commemorate Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 430 and Moses the Black, monk, martyr, c. 400.
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