Shalom

They had just gotten back from helping orphans in the third world and I was there to pick some of them up from the airport. The whole team was there, along with family and friends waiting to welcome them back, so the air was charged with anticipation and all sorts of emotions. When things get like that, my mind clutters and blurs and my mental canvas becomes a mess. But then my eyes locked on one of them, someone I barely knew. She was wearing a simple blouse with faded colors and a dark brown earthy layered skirt. Her hair was a bit lighter than the jet-black I remembered before she left two and a half weeks ago. But it was her face that arrested me. It showed a pain and weariness so absolute it could’ve brought the earth to its knees. I don’t know exactly what she saw or experienced over there, but it wasn’t good. Whatever it was, was unkind, indecent, and I felt it.

But I felt something else, something completely unexpected and opposite. It was peace. What paradox of the senses. Nothing on her face betrayed peace. All physiognomy said pain, but everything else pointed to peace. In fact, there was so much peace that all the pain was subsumed, wrapped up like a sickly child by that familiar blanket which doesn’t cure the illness or pretend it’s not there, but comforts the child in the midst of his affliction and assures him things will soon be okay. A peace that grants patience with hope. This peace was decent, kind, good, and I was privileged to have felt it. Since then, when Providence sees fit, I feel it still, and it always leaves me wondering about the day when. When I’ll feel it forever.

The wasteland will become
The land of peace,
The land the sun rests upon,
Since rising from the East.