Shalom.

The Hebrew word, Shalom, means many things.  These days it's a greeting:  a hello or goodbye, much like Aloha.  But Shalom means something even more.

Biblical shalom is peace that comes from a sense of wholeness.

It's beautiful, really.   When we sense our own wholeness, there is peace, even in the brokenness.  All of us have our particularities, some call them flaws.  It's just things that make us different.  Much of the world wants to judge those particularities as less than acceptable.  But it's those particularities that make us all different.  And if we didn't judge them as better or worse, they would just be differences.  It's tough.  Much of the world teaches us to judge what is really acceptable, what is beautiful, handsome, what is perfection.  But we all have that within us.  All of us are God's children, somehow made in God's own image, which must be an amazingly wonderful image.

One of the challenges in life is to accept yourself, just as God accepts you.  Another challenge is to accept others, just as God accepts them.

When we do.... we will find Shalom, all of us.  Won't that be a great time!?!

YOU are YOU.  Your particularities make YOU You!  Shalom to you.

 

Peace in our journeys,

Pastor Steve Melde