Posts with the tag “shalom”

Let's confronts one of our deepest longings during the Advent season - the longing for peace. We sing beautiful carols about silent nights and heavenly peace, yet many of us carry hearts heavy with chaos, anxiety, and unrest. The profound truth revealed here is that the Prince of Peace doesn't wait for our circumstances to calm down before entering our lives. Instead, He steps directly into our mess. Drawing from Isaiah's prophecy and the birth narrative in Luke, we discover that Jesus was born into political oppression, violence, and a dirty stable - not into tranquility. The armies of heaven didn't whisper their announcement; they proclaimed with authority that peace had arrived. This peace isn't something we manufacture through perfect performance or peacekeeping - it's something we receive through His presence. The distinction between peacekeeping and peacemaking is transformative: peacekeeping exhausts us as we try to manage chaos, while peacemaking invites Jesus into the center of our storm. When we look at Jesus calming the storm in Mark 4, we see that His peace doesn't just soothe - it confronts and commands chaos to bow. The biblical words for peace - shalom (wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken) and eirene (reconciliation, restoration) - reveal that peace isn't a feeling but a Person. Jesus doesn't hand us peace as a gift separate from Himself; He says, 'I am your peace.' This Advent season, we're invited to stop striving to create calm and instead behold Emmanuel, God with us, who brings wholeness to our brokenness and stands with us in the fire.  Read More