I love the beginning of the school year because it always brings a sense of optimism and enthusiasm. And, while I love it, I know it doesn’t last. I always joke that I lead the best school in America in the fall semester and the worst in the spring semester—just ask my families.
This isn’t true, of course. This weekend, I was at an art event in downtown Tyler, and I had two former school dads of alumni approach me in two separate conversations. Each of them told me that sending their now-grown children to Grace was the best money they spent in their entire lives. I was encouraged, but to be honest, I hear that all the time from our alumni parents. I know that kind of joy and gratitude to be the truth—the reality of who and what we are as a school community.
Yet, so much of our lives seem built around emotions other than optimism, enthusiasm, joy, and gratitude, aren’t they? So often, they are centered around worry, discouragement, and fear. We sometimes feel that our lives are out of control. We may live full of regret. We feel alone and misunderstood or in grief and turmoil. We want what other people have (or, at least, what we perceive they have). Feeling these emotions, we then parent from these states. At our core, we know it isn’t good for our kids when we do, but sometimes we just can’t help ourselves.
We feel all these emotions because we often lack the peace of God.
The peace of God is different from the peace of mankind, or earthly peace. I would define earthly peace, or the peace of mankind, as the idea of manipulating my circumstances to reach a state of stability where I can feel calmness, freedom from anxiety, and security. Something that depends on us. So, we invest lots of money to buy things that bring comfort. Lots of people invest in stuff, or experiences, or even in political candidates and their campaigns, and get on social media to try to influence others, all to manipulate their vision of this state of stability and security, of earthly peace.
And the problem with all that is life in a Genesis 3, fallen world won’t allow that definition of peace to exist for very long. Because at the beginning of the summer, when the worst storms I’ve ever seen in the 30 years that I’ve lived in Tyler hit our town and caused trees to fall on our friends’ homes, it shattered our worldly peace. When my child is 15 months past a rollover car accident and is still trying to recover from her head injury, I can’t buy my way into tranquility. When one of our eighth grade Grace U students is unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer several weeks ago, or a student loses a parent to disease or accident, as has happened virtually every year I have led our school, we’d better have superior answers for peace than what we can buy, conjure up, or manipulate. All of those things will fail us.
On the night before Jesus’ death, he was in the upper room with his disciples. I want you to imagine yourself as one of these disciples. You have been traveling, spending nearly every waking moment with Jesus, for three years. He has taught, provided, fed, and loved you, and shown you a better way to live. You now know him intimately; you know in your heart that he is the Messiah, the anointed one.
You find yourself with Jesus in the upper room, enjoying the Passover. All of a sudden, he begins hammering you with what seems like a litany of devastating news: “Now is the time for me to be glorified; I am leaving you; where I am going, you cannot come; one of you will betray me; Peter, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” If this is going to happen to him, what is going to become of you? This seems bad, very disruptive, and disturbing.
The disciples were troubled and afraid, as any of us would be. We know how this feels, because we get bad news often—someone is sick, has lost their job, or has died. We feel anxiety, fear, and discouragement welling up inside us daily.
Jesus knows how they feel, too. And, so he encourages them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)
Jesus promises to leave his peace. And that peace is very different from earthly peace—temporary, easily lost peace.
In Hebrew, “peace” means more than simple quiet or absence of conflict. The word is “shalom,” which means security in mind, body, and spirit. It is completeness, fullness, and wholeness. Throughout its history, Israel rarely experienced peace in the sense of freedom from conflict. It battled for the land God promised it and fought to maintain the land. Yet, God pronounced upon them a blessing of shalom (one which the Grace Ashira! choir sings in its benediction): “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift His countenance toward you, and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:23-26). Even amid war, the people of Israel were to share in the fullness and completeness of God’s presence and His protection.
Likewise, the gift of the Lord that Jesus said he would leave with the apostles and that he gives us as his disciples is that we have peace in the middle of our storms, peace that is rooted not in our external circumstances, not something we have to manufacture, buy, or manipulate, but peace rooted in the nature and character of God, who is all that is whole, perfect, and complete. We find our stability not in what we do or are, but in who he is. That’s shalom.
God is in control, the Lord of everything. He loves you, and he loves your kids more than you ever could. He wants what’s best for them and for you, even more than you do, and he understands what that “best” is in ways you cannot imagine. He also knows how to make that best happen; we do not, no matter how much we think we do.
He is about his glory and honor, and that’s great news because he is a God whose character is goodness, beauty, love, and peace, and when he is glorified, these things get promoted. When we say things happen for his glory and our good, we mean just that—redemption and restoration and godly character being formed, as contrasted by wealth or health or our sometimes distorted notions of the perfect family or kids.
Sometimes we find shalom in the most unlikely places–while losing someone we love or in unanswered prayer, but that instead came with a promise of ultimate healing and resurrection peace, which isn’t what I wanted but what we all, ultimately, need. Or, even shalom in the simple yet awesome revelation of God’s sovereign power—the only answer I sometimes get is the answer of Job.
Our theme this year at Grace is “Seeking Shalom.” We believe God placed that theme on our hearts, not only because we’re in a divisive election year but also because we live in a polarized, anxious, depressed, shame-filled culture. There is a deep need in our culture and world to be a people and a community of shalom. A community of shalom will be a place where children learn well, where people flourish and thrive, and which gives testimony to the power of Jesus in the world.
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