A final thought

Give out a thought and an image:

Our final thought is the video below. Our grand hope is that in some small way this lent blog has helped to bring a little 're-creation' to the way things are heading. Our grand belief is that our faith contains the potential to reimagine and reshape our world. Keep dreaming!

A great community

Give out an image and a thought:

Prayer as Community from 24-7 Prayer on Vimeo.

shalom - four -

We're so sorry that we've missed the last week of the blog. We were at a conference with limited internet access. Over the next few days we'll post our remaining images/ thoughts etc.

Give out an image:

Give out a thought:

Indeed there are many ways of compromising God's will for shalom.

One way that the community can say "no" to the vision and live without shalom is by deceiving itself into thinking that its private arrangements of injustice and exploitation are suitable ways of living...

 The prophets persistently criticized and polemicized against those well-off and powerful ones who legitimized their selfish prosperity and deceived themselves into thinking this was permanent. The prophetic vision of shalom stands against all private arrangements, all "seperate peaces," all ghettos, that pretend the others are not there...

A second way of perverting the vision is to take a short term view...

A third way of abusing God's will for shalom is to credit certain props as sources of life - for example, to idolize political or religious furniture and prentend it is the power of God. (Brueggemann)

shalom - three -

Peacemakers must remember that the shalom of a community will depend on its willingness to face economic questions. Justice and peace are interrelated. The absence of shalom in the Old Testament is signified by poverty, economic injustice, and political oppression. Shalom, on the other hand, is signified by the social harmony where there is no oppression in any form (Isaiah 54:13-14; Jeremiah 32:16-17)

shalom - one an two -

sorry, yesterday was manic and didn't get round to posting so here's two thoughts today.

Give out a thought:

Shalom has often been interpreted as peace. Yet its meaning is so much richer, deeper and wider than that.

Biblical peace, shalom, refers first of all to well-being and material prosperity... Second, peace refers to just relationships... Third... moral integrity. (Alan Kreider)

From this material meaning of shalom, which dominates in the Hebrew Bible, we need to carefully note two things. First, since in English we often use peace to refer either to relationships between people or to an inner state of mind, we must underline the fact that contrary to the English meaning of peace, shalom in the Hebrew Bible refers primarily to a physical state of well-being, to things being as they ought to be in the material world. Shalom is marked by the presence of physical well-being and by the absence of physical threats like war, disease, and famine.

Second, we must stress that shalom is a positive idea. It points to the presence of something like well-being of health, rather than having mainly a negative focus like English peace which points to the absence of something like war. This is important, because in English we tend to define peace as the absence of something: turmoil, distress, or war; rather than the positive presence of things as they should be. This can result in a notion that peacemakers are passive, avoiding conflict and struggle. On the contrary, shalom making is being for something - for a new situation in which people are all right with their material needs being met. In this light, peacemaking as shalom making is striving so that those who do not now enjoy material shalom and physical well-being can do so. (Perry Yoder)

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