Today as I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and listened to Jack Johnson while looking out the window from my 21st floor condo I realized three things.

1. The point of our existence, my existence, is not to prosletyze the nations, not to travel the world, not to learn all that can be learned and understand humanity and God. The point of our existence, my existence, is not to make it big, make it rich, make it to the top. It's not to gain power and force the world to fit my worldview. It's not to tell people they're wrong and show them how stupid they're being. It's not to make a million friends. It's not even to have a job, a family, a suburban house a boat and three cars. Still more, it's not to attend church faithfully for seventy years. It's not to spend seventy years serving a church, living in a church, building a church. It's not to spend seventy years in dedication to prayer.

No, those are all means. They're all pathways to the point. The point of our existence, my existence, is to bring peace and wholeness anywhere and anyway I can until I die.

I took a Hebrew class last semester. It kicked my butt, but I learned a lot. One of the things I learned was about two words, pronounced "rah" and "shalom". "Rah" is the Hebrew word for evil. "Shalom" is the Hebrew word for peace and for wholeness. Shalom occurs when everything is as it should be: the puzzle is complete, the tree is full of fruit, the human is physically, mentally and spiritual fulfilled, lacking nothing, complete, whole. Rah occurs when anything, even the smallest bit, is missing from Shalom. Take one piece from a puzzle and it is Rah. If the tree doesn't bear fruit, it's Rah. Likewise, if a tree doesn't have enough water, it is Rah: it is needy, unfulfilled, Rah. So it is with humans. If we are missing something physically, mentally, spiritually, we are Rah. We all are missing something. Therefore, we're all Rah. And we will be until we die. It's the result of the curse.

However, you'll remember that the curse was broken a couple thousand years ago. Jesus broke it when he rose again. He brought the Kingdom of God back to earth, usurping the rule of the prince of this world. He changed our direction and set us on the pathway back to Shalom, our state at creation. When we accept his intervention and allow him to set us individually on the path towards Shalom, we are made a new creation. We have Shalom again, for a moment. We lack nothing. We experience brief moments of Shalom throughout our lives, so we recognize it. An intimate encounter with Jesus, a poignant moment with dear friends, an epic tale with a true ending, a perfect harmony of voices and instruments, a time in our lives when every need is met and we top Maslow's heirarchy; all of these are instruments God uses to give us Shalom. And we too are his instruments, endowed with the cause to go unto all the world bearing God's Shalom.

We can bring them Shalom by introducing them to Jesus; by providing them food, housing, clothing, a car, a bed, anything that brings them to physical wholeness; by educating; by giving them a refuge from a stormy ocean of circumstances; by inspiring them with story, serenading them with symphonies, entertaining them with adventure; by fulfilling any need they bear. By filling the holes Rah has punched in them, we take them nearer Shalom, nearer God's original plan for them, nearer God's will, nearer God.

And this is what I'm going to do with my life.

2. Listening to Jack Johnson while eating peanut butter and jelly brought my attention back to this summer and the road trip. I jumped back into the Napa Valley, where Matt, Trevor and I spent the better part of a day wandering. It instantly dawned on me that on that entire trip, and especially that day, we hardly accomplished anything. We wasted two weeks of our lives. And I knew in that moment, mouth full of masticated peanut butter and wheat bread, that the waste was important, even necessary. And so our youthful excesses were permissible, because those two weeks of nothing meant more to me than so many years of something. In those two weeks of waste, even on that day, as I rode in the back seat, laid back, looking out the window as the valley flew by, I was right where God wanted me to be. We, we three, were just where God wanted us to be. It was permissible; more than that, it was necessary.

3. The third thing I realized is how blessed I am to be sitting on the 21st floor of a condo overlooking Waikiki. I don't know if I'll ever return to this place, to this island, but for now I'm in a sunny place instead of a bleak place. I'm in Hawai'i, not Spokane, and for that I must be grateful. I'm ready to come home, absolutely, but I can't quite yet. So I'm going to make the most of the sun and go outside and enjoy it. Yes. Right now.