Pastoral Thought--March 3

It was very quiet this morning around the house today. 

Although we needed to begin our day at 5am because of Jennifer’s work schedule, there was little stress floating around the house at that hour. Bianca gently snored at the foot of our bed as Jennifer got ready for her day quietly. I ‘stumbled’ around the kitchen looking for a cup of coffee. All was still. . . JonMark, home for a week from Edinboro, secretly asked if he could take Jennifer to work this morning. I was happy to offer him more time with his mother. So, my morning was even more free and quiet than normal. Now, I like taking Jennifer to work on days when she begins at 7am, but I also know that soon JonMark will be leaving ’the nest.’ So, any excuse for him and his mother to spend time together like this is worth it. 

While he was gone, and while the rest of the dogs still slept, I noticed how quiet, how peaceful, it was in the house. Not even the heater was rumbling. . . God’s peace was resting on our home to such a degree that I did not even contemplate falling back to sleep. I just sat there, sipping my coffee, breathing deeply. . .  

In those moments, I was reminded of the words of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. In his book, Living Toward a Vision, he writes: 

Shalom is a persistent vision of joy, well-being, harmony, and prosperity, many dimensions and subtle nuances: love, loyalty, grace, salvation, justice, blessing, righteousness. [Shalom is] the freight of a dream of God that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery.

I enjoy that thought. Shalom as a vision of togetherness, of grace and blessing, a vision of resisting division and misery, speaks to my soul. Far too many people would rather slam down their pen, or type aggressively on the keyboard, rather than breath in God’s Shalom. For some, being angry is more readily accessible than being peaceful and celebrating how God is with us in that stillness.

Lent is our time of reflection and introspection. It is the silent time in the church calendar where we contemplate sin and confess it to God. But I wonder what would it look like if the Body of Christ entered into God’s Shalom as Brueggemann suggests? What would happen to the church universal if we lived with this ‘persistent vision of joy’ surrounding us, wrapping us up, caring for us? How might we, when those people who do not embrace God’s Shalom enter our lives, how might we live faithfully minister to them in a world that focuses so much of its time on being right and on judgment? 

I sipped my coffee for a while before starting my morning. I resolved nothing. I had no great ideas to fix the world and/or the people that I might meet today who are not practicing God’s Shalom. Instead, I let God’s joy wash over me as the sun came in through the front window. . . And I gave God thanks for today.

Blessings

Rev. Derek