Shalom

God of every blessing, I invite You to shape my soul with Your words and inspire my life through Your works. Teach me to walk in the way of blessing.

Pause and pray

Today I am focussing on a beatitude that is particularly meaningful in a divided and broken world.

Read Matthew 5:1-9

When I read or hear the word ‘peace’, I tend to think about the absence of war and conflict or the absence of busyness and noise. However, the Hebrew word for peace is ‘shalom’, and it means a whole lot more than this.

Shalom is about wellbeing and health, wholeness, and completeness. Shalom means restoring life to all it is meant to be. William Barclay writes that shalom means “everything that makes for humankind’s greatest good.”*

Hebrew speakers sometimes greet their friends with the phrase, ‘Mah Shalomcha?’ (male) or ‘Mah Shalomech?’ (female), which literally means ‘How is your shalom?’ How is your peace? How is your completeness?

I imagine Jesus standing before me now, asking me this question - ‘Mah shalomcha?’ How is my peace? How is my completeness? I take a few moments to talk with him about this.

Pause and pray

I allow my mind to wander for a few moments, naming people and places I know that lack peace. In faith, I bless each of them in turn, in the name of Jesus…

Peace be with you. Shalom be with you. Be made whole.

Pause and pray

When Jesus says that peacemakers will be called children of God, he isn’t making a statement about their status, but about their character. It’s not that those who make peace will become children of God, but that those who make peace are like God. Like Father, like children.

Jesus, Prince of Peace, in You all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). In You all things find their place and their purpose. In You, all things are made holy and whole, they are made complete. Including me. I yield to You and receive Your blessing, Your call to me to go and make peace.

Amen.

*William Barclay, Daily Study Bible, vol 1, p.108