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Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
The Peace of Advent with Pastor Ryan Braley
Imagine finding peace in the busiest season of the year, rediscovering the wonder of the Advent season in a world obsessed with data and facts. Our latest podcast episode invites you on a journey through the transformative themes of peace, hope, joy, and love, with a special focus on the concept of shalom. We kick off with a personal story about the simple act of picking up a dropped Tootsie Roll, illustrating how small, intentional actions can spark profound harmony in our lives. Join us as we explore the beauty of active waiting, symbolized by lighting the Advent candles, and dive into the deeper biblical sense of peace that transcends mere absence of conflict.
We delve into stories of community initiatives and personal anecdotes that underscore the power of kindness in restoring wholeness and peace. Hear about inspiring examples like Operation Christmas Cheer and care packages for veterans, where collective efforts bring hope and healing to those in need. Drawing from ancient Hebrew scriptures, we discuss our shared responsibility to repair what is broken, emphasizing the timeless relevance of these teachings in addressing today's societal challenges. Through the lens of shalom, we see how each small act of restoration contributes to a larger tapestry of peace.
Our discussion takes a poignant turn as we reflect on the role of Jesus Christ in embodying and spreading shalom. Through his teachings, miracles, and fulfillment of ancient prophecies, Jesus offers a model for us to follow in our own lives. Drawing insights from Ephesians, we are reminded of our calling to embody humility, gentleness, and unity. As we navigate the Advent season, we explore what it means to be lights in the darkness, actively bringing peace and fostering unity in our communities. Join us for a meaningful exploration that not only revisits ancient teachings but also offers guidance for living a life of peace in today's world.
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Amen. Thank you, sarah, before we pray. We also live in a time, in the Western world anyway, where we have become what I call and others call disenchanted, where we have sort of become unhooked from the transcendent, when our lives have become less and less magical and full of mystery and wonder. And we've grown to love science, which I think science is great, but many times we rely heavily on these kinds of things. And we've grown to love science, which I think science is great, but many times we rely heavily on these kinds of things and we think a lot about the data we can collect. And the world has become a bit flattened where we've lost a lot of the mystery and the wonder because we've become so, I guess, reliant or in love with science and data and experiments and these kinds of things. So Advent, especially now, in our culture today, that's become sort of disenchanted. It's an invitation back into the magic and the wonder of the world and as people of faith I hope that we never lose touch with that idea of wonder and the magic and mystery of the Christ child becoming, you know, god himself becoming a human being in the flesh and bones and blood of this little Jewish baby in Bethlehem of all places. So let's pray this morning as we do. I pray that God would awaken in us a sense of wonder and mystery in our lives this season. So, god, we give you thanks for your presence here and we thank you for your love for us and this wonderful story, god, of the creator of the cosmos becoming a human. And we ask God that you would awaken in us this sense of mystery and wonder and grandeur and life. God, may we be people of wonder. And this morning, as we light the peace candle, would you help us to be people who recognize and build peace in our world today and would you bless us as we gather this morning In the name of the Father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen, how about you be seated? Good morning everyone. How are we doing Great? So I want to invite you. The next several weeks we're going to get probably more full and more full and more full. So keep squeezing in and coming to the front. So this front pew is wide open. If you want to come down now, you can and enjoy the front seat there.
Speaker 1:So we're beginning our Advent series. It's called the Gifts of Advent. So we're beginning our Advent series. It's called the Gifts of Advent. We're going to just journey through all four of the candle themes, so of peace, hope, joy and love, and we're going to unpack these in sort of this biblical way throughout the whole of Advent. Next week our good friend Casey Stanley will be here preaching on hope yeah, and she's inviting us to this wonderful thing. She's doing so. Come next Sunday and hear more about that. And the following week Ben will be sharing on joy, because Ben is full of joy. Is Ben in the house this month? He's full of joy. And then our last gathering before Christmas. We always have this gathering where we're journeying through the whole story of God and unpacking this beautiful, wonderful way with songs and readings. It's a ton of fun, and join us for that. And then on Christmas Eve, come on one of those four gatherings and invite a friend or a neighbor or someone at the grocery store that could use some wonder and magic in their life this season. Are you with me? So far?
Speaker 1:Great Advent means the coming or the arrival, as we've already mentioned, the coming of Jesus in the story in the Gospels in Bethlehem, of course, the coming of the rule and reign of God that when Jesus shows up he brings this kingdom, a certain ordering of life, a way of being in the world. Jesus shows us what God is like. But Jesus also shows us what we can be like in fullness, like a full human being, the fullness of humanity himself in person. And he brings this kingdom and he goes around building this kingdom and then he leaves and he's like hey, I've started it, the rest is in your hands. And so we live in this in-between time of tension where the kingdom has come, it's been inaugurated in Jesus, but it's not fully here. So there's like this tension it's here and also not fully. Yet One day.
Speaker 1:We look forward to this time in the future we don't really know when when that rule and reign will come in fullness, when God will restore all things and repair all things, renew all things and make us new as well. We call this the resurrection, and that's a day coming. I don't know when it will come. Those who think they know don't know. So stop listening to them on Twitter and on Facebook and the news. But we look forward.
Speaker 1:But in the tension you might experience moments of goodness and peace and hope and love and joy and resurrection, but also moments of darkness and despair and loneliness, sort of like this both and and. We live in between these two times. That's part of what it means to be in Advent. But we don't wait passively. We wait with expectation and with hope, like a woman I've been told I'm not a woman but like a woman giving birth. You know, in labor pains we have these experiences that are like that. And so we wait and we prepare and we sing songs and light candles and we pray together and remind ourselves of these wonderful themes and glimmers of hope and peace and love and joy during the Advent season. And so here we are and we work for the kingdom of God. So each of you one of these candles, and it's light in the darkness.
Speaker 1:Now, the first one is the candle of peace, and peace is a very common word in almost any language across the globe. A lot of folks have this idea of peace and they know what it means. And now, for most people, in most places, peace simply means an absence of war or an absence of conflict. But in the Bible there's this biblical sense of peace. It's much deeper than just an absence of war. In the Bible there's this picture and this usage of the word for peace that actually means not just an absence of something, but a presence of something deep and mysterious and full. So there's two words in the Hebrew and in the Greek used for peace. It's the word shalom and irene. Everyone say shalom, shalom, shalom to you as well. And the word irene Say irene Great. Now the earlier parts of the Bible called the Hebrew scriptures. Those were written in Hebrew and so that's the Hebrew word for peace, the word shalom. Later on, when Jesus shows up, we call this the New Testament or the Christian scriptures. They wrote it in Greek for the most part, and so the word is the word Irenae.
Speaker 1:Now, in the Hebrew, the word shalom means whole or complete, not just an absence of war or conflict, but a wholeness and a completeness. So in Joshua 8, the writer of Joshua writes there's these stones that were perfect and they were uncut. They were shalom, they were these wonderfully uncut stones. So he built it according to what is written in the law of Moses, an altar of shalomed stones, if you will, on which no iron tool had ever been used. So it's a stone, it's perfect, it's whole, it's complete, it's round, no cracks, no chunks missing. It's shalom. And so he uses this to build this altar of shalomed stones.
Speaker 1:Also, in the Hebrew mind there's this idea. They would talk about walls being shalom. So here's a picture of a wall, in case you forgot what they looked like an ancient wall, and they were made of all these different parts and these rocks and stones. And a shalom wall was a wall that was whole and complete, with no missing pieces, no gaps. It was this. It was this beautiful picture of a perfect or shalom wall. Now, as you can see, there's all these different parts of the wall. There's different sizes, different colors, different pieces. They're all kind of working together in harmony. Shalom is this idea of all these disparate parts coming together with no gaps, no fissures, no cracks, to build a wall. In this case, this is perfect wholeness, completeness, this sort of idea of a perfect wall. So that's what it is. It's sort of like these things all come together to work together. It's this complex system of pieces coming together to work and to give us this wall. Now to land the plane.
Speaker 1:Even more, in today's culture, these things right here are a perfect example of shalom or a lack of shalom. Here's why Every year I put up my Christmas lights and every year I find that some engineer somewhere along the way back. Then they thought, hey, it would be a cool idea to make these lights that when they're all working, they all work. But, man, if you just take out one single light, just one, just one light, just take one light out or it burns out. Come on, we landed on the moon and we can't invent a light string of lights that doesn't go out. When one light burns out, every year my shalom is broken because one light burns out. You know what I'm talking about. You pull out those lights every Christmas yeah, let's go, and you plug it in and you hope to the gods of the Christmas lights. They all work. I am not going to go through every single one. So shalom is the idea. Hey, when all the parts work together, when they're all functioning correctly, there's shalom and things are as they should be. But if one thing is missing, if there's one gap in the wall, things are as they should be. But if one thing is missing, if there's one gap in the wall, one crack in the stone, one burnt out light bulb, you have a breaking of shalom and it causes all kinds of chaos, at least in the Braley household. This, of course, is shalom Now in Job.
Speaker 1:Job has all these animals in the Hebrew scriptures and he's got this moment where all of his animals are present. They're all there. So in Job 5, it says this hey, you will know that your tent is shalom because you will take stock of all your property and nothing will be missing. So for Job, shalom meant his wholeness of all his property. Everything he owns is there, it's all present. There's no animals missing. There's no goats or cows, nothing's missing, everything's there, it's all shalom. That's what it means for Job to be in shalom. Now you can also have shalom.
Speaker 1:It can refer to a person's well-being. So when David goes to visit his brothers in the battle lines, he goes out there. He goes out there to check on their shalom. Go ahead for me, sarah. It says David left the things in charge of the keeper of the baggage, ran to the ranks and went, and the hebrews, a bit awkward here. He went to greet his brothers and the hebrews. He went to go check on their shalom. So he goes.
Speaker 1:Hey, how, how is your shalom, fellas, like? How's your health? How's your food resources? You have enough food. Are you guys healthy? Are you whole? How's your psychological well-being? How's your mental state? How are you guys doing. In the. The modern Hebrew it'd be more like hey, yo, dog, you good. That's how we might say that. How are you, how is your shalom? How's your wholeness, how's your health, your well-being, how's your family? I might ask you this morning hey, how is your shalom? How's your own mental health and well-being, how's your physical health, how, how are your resources? Do you have enough? Is there enough to go around in your household? How's your family? You guys, connected? Is there? Is there a relational breakdown? How are things going? How's your shalom, how's your shalom?
Speaker 1:The great lutheran pastor, daniel erlander, describes or defines shalom like this. He says shalom is a wholeness in community, a social reality where all have enough, where forgiveness abounds and all live in harmony. It's just coming together of all these disparate parts to create this beautiful wall, a light string of lights that actually works. It's a wholeness and completeness within community. Now, by the way, it's not just for humans and the ancient hebraic mind. They thought about shalom as a wholeness within the whole cosmos, not just human beings, but in the cosmos, as a proper ordering of things and the whole thing, the whole system has all these pieces that come together to work for shalom. So there's this proper ordering of the entire system of the cosmos itself. So, how's our shalom Now? Any biologists in the room? There's this, okay, oh okay, yeah, harrison, all right, yeah, you raised that hand. High young man, be proud of you All. Right, now let's go. He went like this. No thanks, ryan.
Speaker 1:There's a word called symbiosis or symbiotic. You might have heard this term. It defines the relationships in our world, in the cosmos. There are all these disparate parts that work together. Some work together for a mutual beneficial relationship. We call these mutually symbiotic relationships. So when people work together, when creatures work together I've read a book about how ants will often collaborate together to help each other these kinds of things it's a mutually beneficial relationship. There are also what we call parasitic symbiotic relationships, where things are parasites. I learned about this thing called a fungus ball, a fungal ball. You heard of these, yeah, a couple of you heard of these.
Speaker 1:They feed on other organisms, and so there's this idea that in the world, in the cosmos, there are all these parts either working together or not for shalom, or a lack of, or a breaking down of, shalom. So shalom is like this system of parts that are working together. When they work together. They bring life and light and wholeness, and there are these moving parts, and when they're missing, shalom breaks down and life is no longer whole and life is in need of repair. It needs to be fixed. There's something missing, so there we go. So shalom then, can also be used as a verb.
Speaker 1:You can actually bring shalom. If you're a person in the world who brings wholeness or repairs things or fixes things, you are a bringer of shalom. For example, yesterday I went to Planet Fitness with my daughter. You know the great Planet Fitness gymnasium in Elk River and I don't know why, but for some reason they give out Tootsie Rolls when you go to Planet Fitness. You've been there. They give out these Like you do when you are at a gym. I guess you did.
Speaker 1:And I walked up to Planet Fitness and I noticed, as I was walking in, something out of place. It was like a physical breaking of shalom. I was like this is and it troubled my soul. I noticed that somebody had dropped their Tootsie Roll on the ground. I was deeply grieved. I was like no, we can't have this. This is littering, it's on the ground. So I, as a good Christian pastor, I bent over and I picked up this Tootsie Roll and I yelled Shalom, put it in my pocket. Yeah, I'm a bringer of Shalom, you're welcome. You're welcome, elk River. I'm out here doing the Lord's work, picking up Tootsie Rolls and garbage Any doctors in the house today I'm not gonna retire doctor, any doctors or nurses?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, a couple. Yeah, you guys are bringers of shalom. You help heal and restore bodies and you bring health and reparation to their bodies. You're bringers of shalom. This is what we do. The late great Bob Ross was a bringer of shalom. Did you know this? Whenever there was a happy accident? Oh, no, no, no, we're going to fix that, we're going to repair that, we're going to restore this. And now it's a beautiful tree and a garden image and mountains. It's beautiful, it's shalom.
Speaker 1:How about two girls asking for money to buy a school bus for a small village in Tanzania, africa, thousands of miles away? Why do we care? Why do that? Who cares? Yeah, those girls are bringers of shalom. How about Danita? Where's Danita? Danita takes little pouches of, or not condiments of, not condiment, but shampoo and soap up to our veterans, up in St Cloud, to care for our veterans who are homeless. Why, why does she care? Danita is a bringer of shalom. She's sending packages, care packages, all around the world this Christmas season to service men and women who are dispatched all over the world to give them some love from Central. Hey, we're praying for you, we love you, we care for you. Why? Because Danita is a bringer of shalom, repairing wholeness, completeness.
Speaker 1:How about Kirsten Gill? Is Kirsten here? Oh, she was earlier. Okay, so Kirsten and the two Karens Are the two Karens here? One of them? I just thought, yeah, yeah, they have this project we call Operation Christmas Cheer. These are three things you can give to this Advent and they help raise money and families to support local families who don't have enough money to give their kids Christmas. So there are lots of families in our midst who can't afford to have a Christmas and so, with the help of Christmas Cheer, we all are helping these families have a Christmas with presents and food. Why? Because we're bringers of shalom. We're helping repair and restore, we're providing a community where all have enough, where forgiveness and hope and mercy abounds. This is what we do. We're bringers of shalom.
Speaker 1:So in the Hebrew scriptures there's this moment where Solomon repairs the temple, and it says that Solomon shalomed the house in 1 Kings. He repairs and restores the house of God, the temple. Or how about? There's this wonderful ancient Jewish law, this Israelite law, that says this Go ahead for me, sarah. It says when someone causes a field or a vineyard to be grazed over. So if you have animals in your plot of land and your animals get loose and they go over to your neighbor's yard and graze over there, it's a problem, right? So, uh, restitution shall be made from the best and the owner's field of union. So when your animal goes over there, your job as a good neighbor is to repair shalom, to fix it. Whatever your donkey or your goat or your camel did over there, you got to restore it and fix it. So if your dog goes over to your neighbor's yard and does his business, hey, be a bringer of shalom. Okay, do the right thing. Thank you, peter, for that idea. This is shalom to restore, to repair.
Speaker 1:Actually, this is kind of baking our legal system to. Today. We have this legal code called restitution, where if you steal something from somebody, you have to pay it back. That's why, when you're an adult and your kid goes to the grocery store and steals a candy bar, what do you do? Well, you bring them back with the candy bar. Hey, give it back. You're making restitution. You're bringing back and repairing shalom. The breaking, the fissure of this justice has been brought back. You're bringers of shalom and, as I mentioned, sometimes relationships have to have shalom repaired. So in Proverbs it says this. It says so there are these breakings within our relationships, in our households, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, where the relationships are broken and things need to be repaired.
Speaker 1:When I was in third grade, I had a girlfriend. You know, like you do in third grade. I have no idea. In third grade I was I had a girlfriend. You know, like you do in third grade, I have no idea what it means, but I had a girlfriend and, uh, one day, out the playground, one of my friends disrespected my girlfriend. I won't tell you what he did, but it was bad and I won't stand for this. So I went over to him and we fought, we had it out. Man, it was fist to cuffs, we we were punching each other and we went back inside after recess was over, as you do in third grade, and I felt kind of bad. I'm like now's my buddy. So I saw him go to the water fountain after. You know, we had a little break. We went over to the water fountain. I'm like you know what? You know what? I'm going to go and restore shalom, I said to myself, and I stood just like this and I walked over. I go, hey, man, he goes. Hey, I'm sorry about that, he goes, I'm sorry too. And shalom was restored. Thank you very much. I'm just bringing shalom everywhere I go today.
Speaker 1:You see, sometimes in your life you have a falling out with somebody, or an unkind word is spoken, or you have a negative thought, or there's a fissure in relationships like real ones. That's a problem, it's a breakdown of shalom. And what do you do? I don't know what would it look like to go and fix it, to bring shalom. Maybe you say you're sorry, maybe you ask for forgiveness. Maybe when they ask, you offer forgiveness, maybe you offer it before they even ask. Relationships need shalom. This is why sometimes you'll see husbands at Cove Foods buying flowers. They're bringing shalom to their wives when they've made a mistake, because even relationships need a restoration of shalom.
Speaker 1:In the ancient world you had rival kingdoms, warring kingdoms that would all of a sudden experience shalom, and it didn't just mean that they were no longer warring. It meant that they were now working for each other's benefit. Imagine if you would, if today, warring kingdoms didn't just cease warring but worked together for each other's benefits. I know I'm an idealist, I'm a pastor. They pay me to be that way, but that's how I am right. But imagine if we worked together for each other's well-being, you'd have shalom, this beautiful thing called shalom. In this way, then, shalom is a call to action Because, friends, we've had a tough year, haven't we? We've had a tough couple of years. We've got lots. You can throw a stone in any direction and find breaking of shalom.
Speaker 1:I was on Time Magazine's website and they have the top 100 pictures of the year. I want to show you a couple of them. Oh, go to the next one, sarah, sorry. Yeah, this is a lava flow in Iceland. How about this one? This is humanitarian aid being dropped in West Gaza being dropped in West Gaza.
Speaker 1:Picture of a protester at Columbia University. These are volunteers helping a bombing victim in Russia during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Here's an earthquake 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan. Another protester in Brooklyn, new York. There's a rally in Paris just before the parliamentary elections in France. There's more volunteers helping rebuild or actually sort of clear out the clutter of a bombing at a children's hospital in Kiev. This is ice melting in West Antarctica. Another protester in California.
Speaker 1:Here's the streets in Port-au-Prince in Haiti, a country and city ravaged by local gangs. People are so afraid they don't even go outside. Yeah, we've had a tough year, haven't we? And deep in our bones, we know this is not how things are supposed to be.
Speaker 1:The Jesus story it speaks to the deepest parts of our lives, because we know that we need light in the darkness. We need shalom, we need peace. Our world needs it. I think, deep down, we resonate with this story because this is what we need so desperately and we wait for it. We long for it In the darkness, our world needs it, cries out for it. Paul the Apostle writes that the whole creation is groaning for the day of restoration when shalom will be brought. Yeah, we need it.
Speaker 1:See, the kings of Israel were supposed to be bringers of shalom. They were supposed to embody and live this mission of shalom To bring wholeness and restoration, to make sure all had enough, to make sure that there was life and forgiveness for all in the kingdom. This was their job. To ensure that everyone had enough To make the places that were broken whole. They were to care for the poor, for the widows and the orphans. They had a law in the Jewish law that when you plow, if you're a farmer, imagine a square field. You could plow, but don't plow to the edges. Leave the edges and the corners for those who don't have enough food. It's like a social welfare program in the ancient Israelite scriptures Like hey, leave some food for those who are poor, just leave it out there. Leave it for the widows, leave it for the widows, leave it for any of the foreigners wandering through town that just need a place to go and find food. Help them out, share. There are laws to take care of these kinds of people. They were to be bringers of shalom in the ancient world.
Speaker 1:There is to be justice for those who are suffering injustice. I know today that word justice has been co-opted by political ideologies, but trust me, justice is as old as God himself In the book of Amos. God commands him hey, don't use unbalanced scales, use fair scales. Be fair to each other, even to those who are not in your inner tribal circle. Be fair, use good scales. Justice is old, an old, ancient idea. Social justice again. It's been co-opted. It's an old idea.
Speaker 1:It's it's shalom, and God commands them hey, take care of each other, share your resources, be good to those who don't have enough and it wasn't just human beings. God said hey, on the Sabbath, give your land rest. Hey, take care of the land. That's your job. I put you here in this garden. Tend it, care for it, watch out for the land. Let the land lie fallow. Farmers know this. If you let the land lie fallow and rotate your crops, it's better for the soil, it's more sustainable for our food. It's an ancient Israelite idea. The Israelites also. Hey, also, god told them let your animals have a day off, because even the animals are part of this shalom system. Let them have a day of rest.
Speaker 1:The kings and the people of Israel were to embody and model shalom, but it rarely happened and the result was that things fell apart rather quickly. They fell apart and they do in our lives when shalom breaks down, because the opposite of shalom is not war, the opposite of peace is pieces. I think I have a slide for that. There it is. The opposite of peace is pieces.
Speaker 1:Now Isaiah comes onto the scene in Isaiah 9. It says hey, there will be a Messiah that will come. Somebody will come and save us In the darkness. There will be a light that will shine when he comes. He will be a mighty god, wonderful counselor, everlasting father, prince of peace. His authority will grow continually and his to his kingdom there will be, it'll be endless. There'll be endless amounts of peace. There will be this rain brought by this, by this messiah to come, and his rain will bring shalom. God will make a covenant of shalom with the whole earth, between God and humans, the creation, this whole thing, this whole thing will be made right and all the wrongs will be healed, all the broken places made whole again and peace will be restored. And so the people waited.
Speaker 1:And then, in Luke, chapter 2, jesus shows up after hundreds of years of them waiting, and there was this angel and a multitude of the heavenly host praising god and saying, hey, glory to god in the highest heaven and on earth, peace among those whom he favors. This baby shows up and he's the bringer of peace. The gospels tell us. And then jesus himself says this I love this in. He says, hey, my peace I give to you. Jesus gives us his peace. Then he goes around and doing all these wonderful miracles. What is he doing? He's restoring shalom, the bleeding woman. Hey, that's not shalom. We're going to bring shalom there. The feeding of the 5,000, a couple of times. Hey, you guys need to have some food. I, I'm gonna take care of you. Shalom. He brings shalom. He overcomes the work of the enemy, the evil one, the devil that's bringing shalom. He's making peace everywhere he goes.
Speaker 1:The apostles show up later and Peter writes hey, also, he makes peace amongst the people when he's walking around. But also, jesus makes peace between humans and God. So Romans 5, paul writes this hey, we now have peace with God. Before Jesus showed up, there was, like this, breaking, a fissure in the relationship between God and humans. By the way, it's always on our side. The problem's never with God, it's on our side. There's this breaking of this peace and shalom with God and the cosmos. And Jesus comes and he fixes it. He says we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. He restores wholeness.
Speaker 1:Then, in Ephesians 2, it says this it says for he himself Jesus is our peace. He's made the two groups one, so the Jews and Gentiles are now one, this new humanity thus making peace. I love it. Jesus shows what being a true human, a new human, can really be like. Ephesians 4 then says this this is our calling. And I'll end with this, because Ephesians says hey, look now.
Speaker 1:Your job as followers of Jesus is to embody the life, the attributes, the teachings and the goodness of Jesus. So he says be humble and gentle. I know it's easier said than done, but be patient and bear with each other, hold each other up in love and make every effort to keep unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. Our jobs, your job, my job, as we follow Jesus, who's given us his peace, is to also be bringers of peace. See, the world is still in desperate need of shalom. So, yeah, when you're out and about and you see garbage, pick it up, bring shalom. When you have an unkind word spoken over Thanksgiving dinner, go back and make it right.
Speaker 1:Be a bringer of shalom In your community, where there's pockets of people who don't have enough share, and be bringers of shalom. And when the world all around us has lost its mind and its hope and wars are breaking out, violence and protests, may you be a person who understands the bigger picture that Jesus has made. Peace is bringing peace has invited us to be a part of this that we can sit back and sleep well at night because we have peace. And in the meantime, in the tension because here's the reality some things will be made whole and some things will wait to be made whole. Some things will be fixed right here and now, some things we can't fix in the here and now. We have to wait.
Speaker 1:So in the meantime, we keep working for the kingdom of god, for shalom, and praying for the kingdom to come in fullness on earth as it is in heaven central this advent season. May you be people of shalom. May you be bringers of peace. May you bring together disparate parts and bring unity and wholeness and completeness in community Places where all have enough, where forgiveness abounds. May you share what you've got. May you be light in the darkness. May you receive the peace of Jesus and bring it and share with the world. Amen.
