We didn't get to church today -- a snow and ice storm struck our area over the night, and when we got up we found ourselves in a meteorological mess. This was too bad; not only because the First Sunday of Advent is a kind of new beginning, a New Year's Day of the liturgical year, not only because I'd been scheduled to be on deck assisting this morning; but because the day's lessons are so meaty and worth pondering in community.
This week I found especially resonant the line in Romans 13 about laying aside the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light -- a passage that I think can be read, incorrectly, as a waggy-fingered morality lecture, but speaks to a much broader picture of a life lived in honesty, integrity and wholeness.
Today I've been reading the current issue of The Lutheran . I'll be honest with you; I tend to bypass this magazine just because I am so sick of The ELCA Troubles and other churchy polity issues. But on a whim I visited the magazine website today, and was struck by the current issue's emphasis on shalom; on that concept of all-encompassing wholeness.
At our house we're becoming ever more serious about nurturing wholeness -- physical, emotional and spiritual. We've gone beyond the talking-about stage to actually setting goals and holding ourselves and one another accountable for working toward them. This isn't just about personal quests for better overall health and the positive outcomes that can have for us as individuals and as a household; it's also about wanting our partnership to be the best and healthiest it can be in looking and moving outward, on behalf of other people. We don't want to be stuck in the dark, so to speak, of habits and attitudes that keep us unwell, that keep us from experiencing shalom -- not only for our own sakes, but for others' as well.
I felt a "God" moment, reading the articles in The Lutheran in light of what we've been thinking and talking about and doing at our house. I think that God plants a longing for shalom in each of us; but we need to be periodically reminded that it's an active, not a passive, state of being. And isn't Advent an appropriate time to respond to that call to wholeness?
1 comment:
That Romans passage also has my favourite verses 8-10. As long as you aren't hurting people, you are fulfilling the law.
Stop obsessing over who is good enough and start doing good in the world.
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