....but without the traffic jams

It is hard to hold onto a belief in a kingdom to come.....a world that is divinely formed by, in and with the Spirit.....a community of grace.  It is just hard to believe that it just might be so some day.

Most of the time we think of the kingdom of God as this world minus the traffic jams, and cancer, and probably wars and child abuse.  But the kingdom that Jesus keeps talking about where the meek will be blessed and the hungry full is too good to be true.  It is beyond....beyond here, beyond our imagination, and beyond our ability to bring it into being.

Which, I guess, is a good place to start.  We cannot bring this kingdom into being.  Jesus did.  In his body, among us, and for our sake.  Jesus was the opening.  God hides in, with and under Jesus and together they break into the world we know and begin to bring into being the kingdom where God's way is the only way.

So we 'watch' as Jesus feeds 5000 with a meager lunch and heals a man born blind and walks on water (why not?  If you can heal a man born blind, what is walking on water?).  We certainly know we can't do these things and so we are faced with at least two possibilities:  the stories are exaggerations because nothing like that can occur in the world as we know it.....OR.....Jesus has access to a world beyond this one.  It is a world where God's rule is absolute: not in a power hungry sense but rather in an 'absolutely best case scenario' sense.  Or as the Bible is wont to say, a place and time where we will live in God's glory.

My guess is that you have (at one time in your life) experienced this time and place where the demands and brokenness and rejections and hurts of this world fall away and you are infused with the power of life and light.  For a moment you glimpse the better you and a purity of oneness with the world or your family or possibly even your God.  For a moment you don't even need to breathe.  For a moment you experienced God and the kingdom God invites you into.

Then we move back into this time and this place and seek to see the Lord's face again, to taste the power of God's presence, to be the better you that you glimpsed.  It is here that believing in a kingdom to come is so difficult.

Don't let go of the vision, the hope, the promise that Christ brings to us.  Seek after the face of God like you'd seek after a great deal on a new car...because in the end the car will rust and the kingdom will be yours forever.