The Long Road to Shalom: A Reflection on "Peace to His People on Earth"

If you’ve been in a church on Christmas Eve, you’ve heard the words. They’re as much a part of the season as carols and candlelight. An angel, appearing to shepherds watching their flocks, announces the birth of a Savior, and is suddenly joined by a heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

It’s a beautiful sentiment, one that we hold onto as a promise of the divine calm that Christ brought into the world. But I think sometimes, in the quiet beauty of a Christmas service, we can miss the sheer, earth-shattering power of that statement. This wasn't a new idea, nor was it a sudden celestial wish for humanity to get along. It was the echo of a promise thousands of years old, a promise made to a specific people—a people whose entire history can be seen as a desperate, often heartbreaking, search for the very peace that the angels had broadcast.

This is the story of that search. It’s the story of the Jewish people and their relationship with a single, powerful concept: Shalom. To understand their journey, we must realize that Shalom means so much more than the absence of war. It’s a state of complete wholeness, of well-being, harmony, and security. It is the world as it should be. It was the promise made to Abraham in Genesis, the promise of a people set apart, a beacon to the world. But the path to that promised peace has been anything but peaceful. It has been a long and winding road, traversing the darkest valleys of human history.

A Nation’s Cauldron

The trials began almost as soon as the promise was given. The story of the Jewish people is forged in hardship. Think of their first great test: centuries of bondage in Egypt. This was more than just slavery; it was an attempt to erase their identity, to crush their spirit, and make them forget the God who had set them apart. Yet, it was in that afflicted cauldron of suffering that a scattered group of tribes was forged into a single, unified people with a combined consciousness. Their shared memory of oppression and liberation would become a cornerstone of their identity for all time.

When God delivered them, the road to the Promised Land wasn't a direct route. It was a forty-year trudge through the wilderness. This wasn't just a geographic detour; it was a spiritual boot camp. It was a time of profound testing, a time of learning to depend on God for everything—food, water, and even directions. It was in this unforgiving desert landscape that they received the Law, the framework for living as a community and building a society that reflected the divine ideal of Shalom.

But even with the land secured and the Law in hand, peace was fragile. The era of the Judges was a chaotic cycle of sin, oppression, repentance, and deliverance. Internal strife was rampant. Later, the nation itself would fracture, splitting into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. This division left them vulnerable, and enemies like the Philistines and the mighty Assyrians hounded them. It was a tragic, slow-motion fulfillment of the warnings they had been given: turning away from the covenant would lead not to freedom, but to chaos and vulnerability.

The first great cataclysm came in 586 BCE. The Babylonian army, under Nebuchadnezzar, swept through Jerusalem, destroying the city and, most devastatingly, Solomon’s Temple—the very dwelling place of God on Earth. The people were dragged into exile, losing their land, their sovereignty, and the central symbol of their faith. It was an existential crisis. How could they be God’s chosen people without a temple, without a home? It is in this period of profound grief that some of the most moving passages of the Old Testament were written. The Psalms of lament, the book of Lamentations—they are the heart-cries of a people who feel abandoned. Yet, it was also in Babylon, in the depths of their despair, that their faith was refined and renewed, setting the stage for an eventual return.

The Long, Dark Road of Diaspora: The Scattering

That return, however, was temporary. A Second Temple was built, but the land would be ruled by a succession of foreign powers, culminating in the iron fist of the Roman Empire. It was into this world that Jesus was born. And it was this Roman power that, in 70 CE, would bring about the second great cataclysm. After a Jewish revolt, Roman legions crushed Jerusalem, leveling the Second Temple. This time, the destruction was even more complete. The Jewish people were scattered to the four corners of the earth, beginning the long, painful chapter of their history known as the Diaspora. They were a people without a homeland, sustained for nearly two millennia only by their shared faith, their sacred texts, and their traditions.

As they spread throughout the world, they often found themselves as an unwelcome minority. The tragic irony of their history in the Middle Ages is that they faced some of their most brutal persecution in Christian Europe, at the hands of those who claimed to follow the "Prince of Peace." The Crusades, ostensibly aimed at liberating the Holy Land, often began with the massacre of Jewish communities along the way. Vicious rumors, like the "blood libel"—the absurd accusation that Jews used the blood of Christian children in their rituals—led to waves of violent persecution. They were expelled from England in 1290, from France at various times, and most famously from Spain in 1492, forced to either convert, flee, or be killed.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the epicenter of this hatred shifted to Eastern Europe. The pogroms in the Russian Empire were not random riots; they were organized, often state-sanctioned, massacres designed to terrorize and displace Jewish populations. This relentless violence reinforced a sense of perpetual insecurity. It triggered massive waves of emigration, with many fleeing to America, seeking peace and safety they could not find in the Old World.

Then came the 20th century, and with it, the ultimate darkness. The Holocaust, the Shoah, was a horror unlike any other. It was not just a bigger, more efficient pogrom. It was the systematic, industrial-scale attempt to annihilate an entire people from the face of the earth. It was a cold, calculated effort to reverse the promise made to Abraham, to extinguish the "light to the nations" forever. In the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the killing fields of Eastern Europe, six million Jews were murdered. This represents the lowest point of their long history of suffering, a profound and terrible challenge to the very idea of a benevolent God and the promise of His protection. It was the ultimate test of survival.

A Precarious Peace

Out of the ashes of the Holocaust, a new chapter began. The centuries of persecution had given rise to a political and cultural movement known as Zionism. At its heart, Zionism was a simple, desperate idea: if the Jewish people were ever to be truly safe, if they were ever to find Shalom, they needed to return to their ancestral homeland and govern themselves. It was a movement born of the conviction that no one else would protect them.

In 1948, this dream became a reality with the founding of the modern state of Israel. For the first time in nearly 2,000 years, the Jewish people had a home. It was a moment of immense, almost unbelievable, hope. Survivors of the death camps, refugees from across the Arab world, and idealists from every continent gathered to build a nation. It felt like the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy, a return from the longest exile.

But the moment of its birth was also the moment the battle for its survival began. The surrounding Arab nations immediately declared war, and the conflict has, in one form or another, continued ever since. The peace that was so desperately sought remains precarious, contested, and elusive.

The 21st century has not brought an end to the struggle. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most complex and painful geopolitical issues of our time. It is not a simple story of good versus evil. It is a tragic clash between two people with deep historical ties to the same small piece of land, both with legitimate claims and profound historical grievances. The modern struggle has been defined by key events like the Intifadas (Palestinian uprisings), the ongoing conflict with terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, the bitter debates over settlements in the West Bank, and the seemingly endless, heartbreaking cycle of violence and retaliation. Every rocket fired, every life lost on either side, is a painful reminder that faithful Shalom has not yet arrived.

And the ancient hatred has not disappeared; it has simply mutated. Modern antisemitism is on the rise globally. It appears on the far-right in the form of white supremacy, on the far-left in the form of anti-Zionism that often crosses the line into outright antisemitism, and it spreads like wildfire across the internet. Even with a homeland and an army to defend it, the Jewish people find themselves once again fighting for their right to exist in peace.

The Unfulfilled Hope

So where does this leave us? We are brought back to the present moment, to a people who have survived the impossible. Their story is a testament to resilience and faith that is almost beyond comprehension. They have returned from exile, rebuilt their nation from sand and swamp, and revived their ancient language. And yet, the complete, holistic peace of Shalom remains just out of reach.

How, then, do we understand that angelic proclamation? "Peace to His people on earth." Considering this long, bloody history, it can be tempting to view it as a failed promise. But faith invites us to see it differently. The story isn't over. Perhaps the promise was never about an easy, unbroken peace, but about an enduring hope that could sustain a people through the darkest of nights.

From a Christian perspective, we see the ultimate fulfillment of this peace in the person of the Messiah, Jesus, also known as Yeshua, the Prince of Peace. We believe His kingdom will one day bring the ultimate Shalom that the world has been groaning for. But that does not diminish the unique, ongoing story of His people, Israel. For both Jew and Christian, the wait for true, lasting peace is an act of faith. It is a belief that, despite all the evidence of history, God's promises do not fail to come to pass. It is a hope that has carried a people through bondage and exile, through pogroms and the Holocaust, and it is a hope that sustains them still, as they continue their long, arduous journey on the road to peace. Shalom.