Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 17 verses 20 and 21:
20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
Because both ancient and first-century Judaism and also Christianity are apocalyptic religions there has and remains always a sense of God's appearance to come. God and God's kingdom are perceived always to be offstage, forthcoming in the next Act. The Kingdom will come when we get the next President or the next job or move on to the next big thing or church or heaven.
But Jesus taught that the Kingdom is not always in big things to come. The Kingdom is also, Jesus taught, in small things right here.
Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed." In other words, the Kingdom is never something that is stood beside and watched. If we are bystanders waiting for God and God's Kingdom to show up as something to be witnessed in third person then we'll be waiting forever. The Kingdom of God never comes in third person. The Kingdom of God is "in the midst" of us. In other words, the Kingdom of God is now or it's never.
Paula D'Arcy says, "God comes to us disguised as our lives."
God's Kingdom will show up disguised today amidst the ordinary, frustrating, and bewildering ways of the world. It will come amidst wars and rumors of wars, and predictions about end-times, and a broken economy, and melt-downs of four-year-olds, and CD players that don't work when you need them to at the children's program.
God's Kingdom will come right in our midst, disguised as our messy and fearful first-person lives. And the question for us today is will we see it? Will we have eyes to behold it? Will we live into it?
Or, will we just let it pass us by, as we're waiting on the Supertrain?
No comments:
Post a Comment