Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Adam R. Holes wrote today's reading, and he titled it, Agents of Shalom.

In 2015, local ministries in Colorado Springs, Colorado, teamed up to serve the city, and Because I Love You

was born. Each fall, in an event called CityServe, the group sends believers out to serve the community.

Several years ago, my children and I were assigned to a downtown elementary school during CityServe.

We cleaned, we pulled weeds, and we worked on

an art project, lacing colored plastic tape through a chain link fence in a way that approximated

mountains. Simple, but surprisingly beautiful. Whenever I drive past the school, our humble art project

reminds me of Jeremiah 29.

There, God instructed his people to settle down and to serve the city they were in.

He commanded this even though they were in exile and didn't want to be there.

The prophet said,

Seek the peace and prosperity of the city, to which I have carried you into exile.

Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. The word peace here is the Hebrew

word shalom, and it encompasses the idea of the wholeness and flourishing that only God's

goodness and redemption can bring. Amazingly, God invites each of us to be his agents of

Shalom right where we are. We're invited to create beauty and practice redemption in simple, concrete ways

in the spaces he's placed us. Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from

Jeremiah chapter 29 verses 1 through 7. This is the text of the letter that

the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests,

the prophets, and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

This was after King Jeholykin and the Queen Mother, the court officials and the leaders of

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