The
Kingdom of God. My mind has been
swirling with what this means. The Kingdom
of God. I pray for it. I long for it. I pray for it to come for the
kingdom that is here now and yet to be.
I am humbled by the opportunities to work and serve, as I have said on
more than one occasion, in this small corner of God’s Big Kingdom. It provides purpose and context to what we do
each and every school day. What better reason is there to get out of bed and do
what we do than to say we are faithful servants in God’s kingdom?
We
see other kingdoms around us. In the time of Jesus it was the Empire, the
Kingdom of Rome: Strong and powerful,
full of pride and honour, with its defences and an all-encompassing way of
life. It was in this setting that Jesus
introduced a very controversial and contrary way of kingdom building. Today there are other empires with just as
much bluster. In the west we have the
countries of NATO. More specifically to
us, we have Canada and the United States.
The pervasive, ladder climbing notion of kingdom building remains but
Jesus has shown us a different path.
But
then we don’t think of that each and every day.
We cling to our own devices. We
are kingdom builders who constantly engage in advancing one kingdom over another
and we don’t always get it right. We
contribute, probably all too often, to our own kingdoms with selfish kingdom
efforts. We place ourselves on the
throne and subjugate the things that are around us. We employ defences to ensure we keep our
kingdoms the way they are.
Our
priorities can get out of whack. I have
done some recent readings that focus on the following theme. The
path of descent is the path of transformation. The parables, when read back to back to back
explicitly state “The kingdom of heaven is like….” These illustrations often flip our idea of
kingdom completely upside down. We need
to pay attention to these images for they do show that we must decrease and He
must increase. It starts with a humble and contrite heart and progresses (down)
from there. Let us then be intentional
about our kingdom efforts and direct our
efforts towards building a community of grace where we celebrate and live out
the Good Gift of God’s grace in community.
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.”
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