Seeking Shalom: Embracing a New Year, Closing Out a Decade

By: John Blumenstein, Head of School

They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. (1 Peter 3:11, NIV)

During our first chapel of the new year, we watched an engaging video produced by the Bible Project, entitled “Shalom/Peace.” This particular video is part of a series of videos focusing on Advent themes. The Christmas holidays often come and go with little regard for the year-round relevance of the Advent season in the church calendar. 

Annual liturgical traditions that have been developed and preserved by Christians over the past 2,000 years remind us that Advent is part of a larger story in which the reality of redemption is ever unfolding. 

The word “peace,” commonly used to translate the Hebrew word shalom, provides a window into the richness of the ever-unfolding biblical story of redemption. As explained in the video, shalom is about more than just peace as the absence of conflict. 

Shalom is about wholeness and completeness, the full realization of how things ought to be in this world. 

In the ever-unfolding story of redemption, shalom reminds us of the brokenness and incompleteness that we experience in the world around us. When I asked students for examples of that brokenness in chapel, I was amazed at their responses. They mentioned such examples as plane crashes, referencing recent events in Iran, wildfires, referencing what has been happening in Australia, and litter, referencing disregard for the environment. 

Furthermore, these examples were given mostly by elementary students, reminding us not to take for granted children’s awareness of what is happening in the world or their conception of what is ideal as it concerns peace and wholeness. 

Children who acknowledge global brokenness are also quite capable of acknowledging local brokenness.

We should encourage children to see connections between global brokenness and local brokenness, also challenging them to be local instruments of shalom in the classroom, at home, in neighborhoods, and in churches. 

As we enter 2020, a new year and the end of a decade, praise be to God for the wonderful ideal of shalom, embodied in the person and work of Jesus, whose Advent reminds us year-round to celebrate the gift of shalom and to be instruments of shalom wherever we encounter brokenness.