Years ago we were driving to Idaho in brutal summer heat, Wes still a tiny guy wrestling against his car seat the whole way. “I hate this, I hate this,” he screamed, until he finally passed out. When we parked, he woke up sweaty, red-faced, hair matted, looked around at this strange hot campground and asked, “Why are we even here?” I laughed, but I also thought, that’s the deepest question a human can ask.
Why are we even here? The Bible answers it with a word we can almost miss: shalom. We usually translate it “peace,” but it’s bigger than that. The best English word for it is flourishing. The whole story of Scripture is about human beings flourishing in life with God. And here’s the key: flourishing isn’t self-centered. It’s learning to serve the people around you so they flourish too. Seek the shalom of the city, and you’ll find your own.
That story comes in three chapters. First, good creation. A good God makes a good and beautiful world and hands humanity a job: be trustees of my estate, steward the flourishing of this garden. Second, anti-creation. A deceiving voice enters, we listen to it instead of God, and shalom fractures. Instead of cultivating flourishing, humans start exploiting it. Third, new creation. God refuses to abandon us. Through Jesus, the garden gone wrong is becoming a new garden city, where life flourishes forever.
I think of the time my daughter got a thin comb hopelessly tangled in her thick hair. It took seconds to knot and two patient hours for Grandma to work it out strand by strand. That’s our world. It ruptured in a moment, and God is lovingly, slowly untangling it, one person and one new-creation moment at a time. The promise that he’ll finish is Jesus himself, the Prince of Peace who walks into a room full of frightened people and simply says, “Shalom y’all.”
So why are we here? To use our unique gifts to help the garden come alive. Not just to be good at church, but to become self-giving, loving people who steward the flourishing of others. What would our world look like if we reclaimed that? - Pastor George