Why is peace so elusive? Why do we often only get small glimpses of shalom? To understand, we must go back to the beginning of the ‘big story’ that the Bible tells. All of our lives are lived under a larger story which has four chapters: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Last Things. No matter what we make of our own stories, our successes, failures, triumphs, or tragedies, the inescapable fact is that this larger story the Bible tells IS our story. It governs the entire flow and experience of life.
When we go back to the beginning of the story, we find that God created everything and that we human beings were the pinnacle of that creation. We uniquely bear God’s image, meaning that not only are we constituted a certain way (with spirit, will, conscience, self-awareness, etc.) but also that we were given God’s authority to exercise dominion, to rule over what He created even as He ruled over us. Sadly, the second chapter of the big story reveals that we rebelled against God, choosing to live on our own terms, not His. This ‘fall’ put shalom in jeopardy. In this message, we learn that we bear the blame, we bear the consequences, BUT God bears with us.
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