And suddenly the fog lifts...

Every once in a while things become clear. Or more clear. Or clearer. There are times in my life where I find I start using certain words or phrases, and then I just admit to myself that I don’t really understand what I am saying. I had this a few years ago when I was really into using the word “missional.” Everything needed to be missional. I thought I knew what it meant, but then in one final essay in one of my English classes, one of my students wrote this mesmerizingpaper on being missional, and she focused on the word “being.” And at one point she said “A church or school that is missional is much more important than a church or school with a mission.” Clarity. For some reason I remember sighing. It was just so…clear.

Tonight I had another such experience. In the midst of speaking, a good friend of mine started working out a definition of “Shalom.” Not only did he start working it out, he did so in the middle of 100 people in a crowded room. He started by asking "what is your deepest desire for your children?

And he had me.

And then he used a phrase that I may never forget. I don't even know if he meant to use it in such a way that the whole room felt silent, or so it seemed. Sometimes those words or phrases we throw out suddenly have a deep and rich meaning.

He said, “Shalom and the Shadow.”

He talked about how we have moments in our life where we feel “Wow!”, like we are standing on holy ground in a holy place. The beauty of sitting on a veranda at the end of a good day when there is peace with your soul. God's creation sings and we respond. And then we have moments of “Wow”, and we get discouraged because things are not the way God intended them to be. God's creation suddenly groans; an earthquake in Pakistan, or tsunami, a hurricane, a homeless person, an abused child. And hopefully, we groan with a creation and world that is broken, but not defeated. He talked about how in every aspect of our lives we experience Shalom, we experience things the way God intended them to be. And then we experience the Shadow, the sad and often painful reminder that we are not yet there.

And it makes me think of my own life. The small moments of Shalom that make me think God is giving me a taste, however small it may be, that the Kingdom of God is already…the triumph of a daughter who can’t remember the what the letter “G” looks like, and then does (seriously, you are just willing her, begging, bargaining with God “please Lord, let her remember G”); or another daughter who so desperately wants to sing in her classes school wide chapel, but is chosen to speak, and she comes home and she is okay with that…she is okay that it’s not about her; and another daughter who I am close with but has never really let me put her to bed, and last week she summoned me from under her sheets to “come and sing me a song” and I got to do all the silly actions to “If I Was a Butterfly…”yes, it is already here as I sing a song so terribly off key, and all my daughter wants me to do is re-sing the verse about "if I was a fuzzy wuzzy bear, I thank you lord for my fuzzy wuzzy hair..." The Kingdom of God was so real.

And sadly, not yet. And there is no real appropriate way to even explain that. Students, children, friends, acquaintances who have wounds I could not even begin to understand. We have these deep wounds that fester and spoil and remind us of things we can't or don't want to understand. And global scars. People have scars in South Africa I can’t even comprehend; people in Sierra Leone; people in Rwanda from the civil war…

So tonight I listened and my heart was stirred. Stirred with excitement because we get a glimpse of the already. And my heart was stirred because God says “not yet”, and he calls me (and you), because we are blessed to be a blessing; for us to maybe pull the clouds away from someone so that they are a little less in the shadow, and a little more in the Son.

Thanks, Dennis, for stirring a familiar word and making it new again. A little more Shalom, a little less shadow.