{"id":216,"date":"2017-06-05T21:28:55","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T21:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/lovemercydojustice\/?p=216"},"modified":"2017-06-07T13:53:02","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T13:53:02","slug":"learning-live-shalom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/lovemercydojustice\/2017\/06\/05\/learning-live-shalom\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Live Shalom"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Denise McKinney, Connections Pastor at Redeemer Covenant Church, Tulsa, OK<\/em><\/p>\n

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I am on a journey of learning to live shalom. I have always thought of myself as a fairly peaceful person in how I live life. Internally, not much rattles me and I can navigate stress fairly well without losing my cool. Externally, I have been ever the diplomat in disagreements, trying to find a good middle way in the presence of extremes. Those things are mostly still true about me, but something has changed. I have discovered that keeping the peace in my soul and in my life is not really shalom. At most, it\u2019s a shallow, low-impact kind of peace that does not do the Hebrew word justice.<\/p>\n

Shalom is not a warm fuzzy kind of peace to request when we want things to get better, or when we want to feel better in a bad situation. Shalom is about all created life flourishing in the fullest expression of God\u2019s love for us. It is helping everyone and everything live into the purpose and identity given by God the Creator. Shalom is an active, holistic, and intentional movement of God in our lives and in our world to set things right. Paul describes it vividly in his letter to the church at Colossae:<\/p>\n

\u2026all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe\u2014people and things, animals and atoms\u2014get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross. Colossians 1:19-20 (MSG)<\/em><\/p>\n

What is taking deep root in my own heart is that if God\u2019s shalom is at work to put all the broken pieces of our lives and our world back together the way they were always meant to be, then praying for peace, or trying to be a peaceful person cannot be lived in the first person. Shalom falls short when it is about just me, or my immediate experience. And when I do allow it to be about just me, there isn\u2019t room for another to flourish. If my time is all about me, I will feel inconvenienced when I encounter a time-sensitive need. If my resources are all about being comfortable now and saving for the future, I won\u2019t give as much as I really can. If my political and cultural perspectives are rooted in a mostly white, suburban experience, I am at risk of perpetuating racial and cultural divisions, and missing the beauty and flourishing of diversity.<\/p>\n

I think that truth convicts me most. When I recognize that my life has been lived in a fairly insulated environment without a lot of diversity, I can see some conscious and unconscious lessons of \u201cme, me, and more me.\u201d I did grow up in a home where my parents fostered dozens of children over two decades, and that left an indelible mark on my soul, led me into ministry and has been the part of my story I have revisited much lately to understand what it means to truly live shalom. But, regrettably, one of my dear foster sisters recently reminded me that as a teenager, I took advantage of my relationship with my own parents by requesting the best shower times, even though there were 4 other foster girls sharing the same bathroom with me. It may seem small, but even in the midst of an environment where shalom could have flourished in abundance, (and often it did!) in that instance, I did not pursue the peace that brings healing and unity.<\/p>\n

So what does learning to live shalom look like today? There are a few realities God is putting in front of me quite often:<\/p>\n