peace
“When you enter a home, greet the family, ‘Peace’.” (Luke 10:5)
As Jesus was sending his disciples into homes, he left them a few interesting charges. Travel light. Don’t loiter and make small talk. Proclaim “God’s kingdom is here!” But I like this charge: as you enter a home, bring peace. Bring shalom.
Peace. Wholeness. Stillness. So hard to find in a very noisy world. We are constantly living restless lives, confronted by what we should be doing, and the costs of not doing as we’re told. It’s amazing how the world has reduced us to grabby fighters out to cling onto a piece of the pie. No room to stop and re-examine. No space for healing to begin.
Every day feels like an exercise in putting back together a fractured life. If I’m not being pulled apart by practical demands, there are voices that whisper ‘I’m not good enough’ and ‘My life is unsatisfactory’. If it’s not voices, it’s my own iniquities, my own careless, callous way of dealing with people more lonely than me, that renders me numb and ultimately broken.
How do we find peace nowadays? How can I find oneness in me, where what I say is from who I am, where my inner world can find order even during messy days like today? Before I can even hope to bring peace into homes, how can I find a semblance of it in my own life?
I don’t know. There is such a guilt in me that I am still so easily shaken by negativity, still so vexed by what I am or am not. But I pray even in moments like these, they mostly serve as doorways to peace. That peace and wholeness isn’t a reward, but a gift to the broken, an act of grace to the disturbed. That God doesn’t just reveal his heart to those who have it together and know it all, but to the babies, the naive.
What a weird faith to partake in. A faith that celebrates weakness, blesses the pained, embraces the nobodies. I don’t have it all together God. Let Shalom come into my world.
Lord, I come rebuked. I come as a proud man brought low. Save me from pride, from self-sufficiency.
Grant me peace. And teach me be a man of peace.
Amen.
