Where do you find peace? Stop and think about it. What are the spaces and places and people and circumstances that bring you peace? All of those are likely good things. Good gifts from a good God meant to give us a taste of the shalom that was here before the world began.

As we approach the Advent season, the first theme of the traditional Advent calendar is hope. Biblical hope is different from the way we use the word in our modern contexts. We hope it doesn’t rain and our event gets moved inside. We hope a certain candidate wins an election. We hope this suffering passes.