The Kingdom is like...

What do you imagine as you pray,

“Your Kingdom come on earth as in heaven”?

How do we enter this Kingdom and then live each day as Kingdom citizens?

What is this Kingdom like?

Jesus gives us many pictures that invite us into different ways of seeing, knowing, understanding what life in this Kingdom is like.  Let’s explore one of those here.

In the gospel of Mark, chapter 4 verses 26 through 29, we read:

“This is what the Kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed in the ground. Night and day,

whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain-- first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

God's Kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it!

I wonder, as you read these words, if you found yourself protesting. “ I am sure if the man were a farmer, he'd be watching for the sign of the first shoots,, he'd be weeding, watering…” But here Jesus is inviting us to see what happens because God has already put life into that seed. The seed is following the path God has already set out for it. Not only does the man not have to do anything, neither does the seed!

There are so many ways Jesus described the Kingdom. Always with the wording “it is like”, not “it is”, opening for us not certitude but possibility, mystery, wonder… The challenge for us is to read His words slowly and to resist immediately deciding—ah, I know what he's saying. The challenge is to sit with the words and the image they portray and to allow thoughts, ideas and possibilities to arise to allow these percolate as in the old days, the way coffee was made-- the longer you let it boil and bubble, the stronger and more delicious the coffee.

So I invite you to sit with this parable. Read it and reread it. Get familiar enough with it that the words will pop back into your mind as you go about your day. Let “ohm” moments happen, even “aha” moments but don't stop there. Let the Spirit teach you what He has to say to you personally today.

 As I sat with this parable, the thought came to me: this is like the words God spoke through the prophet Isaiah:

“As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower

and bread for the eater

So is my word that goes out from

my mouth

it will not return to me empty

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for

which I sent it

(Isaiah 55:10, 11)

We plant the seed. We are not the designer. We are not the sun. We are not the rain. We are not the one who enables this tiny root to grow those tiny root hairs. We didn't invent the process by which water molecules pass into the cells and then rises up against gravity from the root into the plant...

I wonder if there is an invitation here to come aside for a time, to find a quiet place outside and just sit and allow the awareness of the life that's happening all around you sink into your innermost being?

 I sit in my yard, just being aware of the different colors of the trees. noticing the new growth on the tall conifers that reach up into the blue of the late afternoon sky, the clouds moving slowly, the breeze gently stirring the leaves. This is God's world, doing what He created it to do. I wrote a poem once about a conversation I had with a tree. Maybe there's an invitation here for you to listen and to allow some creature to share his story with you.

I sit in the sun on my sister's porch in the New Zealand countryside, watching two white butterflies fluttering by each other. There are two dandelions on the grass, and they are taking turns collecting the nectar. I think again of how the creatures follow their inbuilt instincts. They're not worrying about where to find food, or what the future will bring.

On the plant beside me, I notice a praying mantis sitting so still I wonder if she's alive. Her abdomen seems large, so we wonder if she has eggs she's about to lay. Day after day, she sits there. One day I came out to find she is having breakfast—she has somehow captured an ant and is chewing on it! Again, the cycle of life, each doing the job they have set before them.

I'm afraid we live too carelessly in the city, driving to the nearest supermarket every time we need more food. We miss out on wonder. Sit with me for a moment. Have you ever planted a seed? Maybe like a carrot seed, that's so tiny a bunch of them escape into each hole. And yet in each tiny seed is embedded what it takes to grow, Step by step, Into the delicious carrot--tiny seed to 6-inch carrot. A miracle!

This is what the Kingdom of God is like: I put the reflections I'd written with God into a book and published it. ”Awakening to God’s Presence: An Invitation to Wander and Wonder with God”. Night and day, whether I sleep or get up, my book is there on Amazon. There's a natural progression of my book becoming what God had in mind that I have very little to do with. Someone buys my book, and enjoys it, and decides to buy another as a gift, and so the circle widens of people being invited to wander and wonder with God.

What is the Kingdom of God like in your world? What seed has God-given you to plant, to put out into your world as an offering to the whosoevers? What areas is God inviting you to rest and trust that the harvest will come in time and through the unfolding pattern that God has put in place?

This is what the Kingdom of God is like: you share a word of encouragement, of insight, of comfort, of possibility, with someone and then you let it go-- let go of the expectation of what might happen, and you allow the long slow journey of that person's life to unfold. Others will come into that person's life; they may water, they may warm, and in due season, you may have the delight of seeing fruitfulness in that person's life.

We humans don't do well with being told to let go of control, to realize how little control we really have over so many aspects of our lives. Are we willing to let go, to trust that the seed we are given to sow will in God's economy and time yield us the harvest? Can we accept that we didn't work for it and don't deserve it?

How does this invitation represented by Jesus here resonate for you in your life today?

Is there a practice that can arise from this point of view?

A confession of trust,

of surrendering to the circumstances of your life,

and holding on to the belief

that there's something God is working within the unseen,

a mystery,                                                                   

the natural unfolding of purpose,

a supernatural, hidden agenda

that love is calling forth

softly, gently

below the surface of the obvious,

calling you to trust,

calling you to hope,

calling you to persevere,

to know that Love undergirds it all.