Why It's Not What You Think

 The Kingdom of God is not what you think. 

I sat at the table, my plate loaded with food, talking to another church-member about life, about brokenness, about living in love, about being a given gift to those who need it most. About how each of us is accepting and learning what it means to live the Light...that the Gospel comes with an obligation to let your one life be opened in two so that His love can pour out and others can find a safe place in a world that split our souls and steals our faith right from us. In this moment of sheer raw honesty, he walked straight up to us and sat down at our table...

 His wife had died from cancer just over a year prior, leaving him to raise four children on his own. Four children under ten-years-old who now had no mother...the youngest hadn't even had her second birthday yet. He has loved them as best he can. He has himself been poured out to them in a daily sacrifice of caring, training, nurturing, and trying to be all those things both mother and father should. But one has to believe his heart is still aching. Still breaking. Because she's gone. And he's still here...until death did them part. 

 He pulls out his phone and shows us pictures of his wife's headstone that just got put up the other day. My heart wrenches as I see the four children standing around their mother's grave. Why does life have to be so cruel sometimes? What appears to be hidden grace still hurts and we are all left with questions. Questions only God knows. And for the rest of the life of me...I somehow think these questions may never be fully answered...until one day...

 I see this moment as critical. This is a heart-moment. A moment when all that matters is this one soul and his grieving family. They come to church nearly every Sunday, but I wonder how many have been willing to listen. Just listen. Because he has things to say. Things that maybe he's holding in because he doubts if anybody cares enough to stop. 

 After telling us about the headstone and the location of it in the cemetery and all things dead and ending and gone forever, he then turns personal. He looks us in the eye and says, "Somehow I just can't seem to bring myself to take my wedding ring off." As if taken back in time to their wedding and his vows to forever, he adds, "Til death do us part, ya know. Maybe now that the headstone is up..." and he trails off. 

 The lady next to me says to him, "You must miss her a lot." Tears start welling up in his eyes as he nods in reply, "Yeah. I miss her. A lot." You can see that the pain still drives deep. His tired face still speaks to one that has had his life upended in the last couple of years. He's still trying to pick up the pieces and carry on. He's trying to figure out how to pool enough money to send the boys to Christian camp this summer. And I feel his burden. It's like it's leaking right out of him. And she and I are the ones to listen. 

 Oh, I see it clearly now: what have we done with our lives if all our lives are ever about is ourselves? Could it be that all this doing for God isn't really doing anything at all? Could it be that He is actually showing up where we are least inclined to look?

 I am convicted in my soul as I realize how many times I've been duped into thinking that the Kingdom was in much activity - that the more I participated in, the more I volunteered for, the more I gave, the more I accomplished for God was proof of my holiness - when, in reality, the Kingdom was right in front of my blind eyes in moments like this. I turn to her and I said it out loud...to both of us... 

The Kingdom of God is not what you think.

 Sometimes we can make our life about "much serving" when Jesus actually spoke against this mindset in Luke 10: 40-41. When He said that Martha was in error for chastising her sister for taking the time to listen...to simply be...to pursue the Kingdom...while she ran herself ragged and cared about many things temporary. He told her that "one thing was needful." That her sister, Mary, had chosen a "better part" by sitting. Sitting with Him. And it hits me like a ton of bricks...

Christ's Kingdom isn't built by the amount of church activities we show up for, or the number of small group Bible studies we lead or participate in, or the programs we sign up for, or the frequency with which we have guests over...or a million other countless ways we think we gain points with God by our busyness. Christ's Kingdom is built when we are the broken gift to others. 

Christ's Kingdom is built when we take the time to simply offer ourselves as available to the leading of God. Because isn't God always moving, and aren't we failing to move with Him when we look for Him where He is not? 

Christ always went to the places and hung out with the people the religious elite said He should not. He chose humble, ordinary men to be His world-changers. He ate with sinners and social outcasts. He welcomed those that the social norms said were too far gone to stand a chance. He busted the system to get to those who needed Him the most. He said that because He was offering Himself as a broken gift, those who follow Him are called to do the same. And the ones named in His book as significant are the ones who were brave enough to give all they had while those condemned thought they were holy but missed the Kingdom because they looked for it in all the wrong places. 

 When Christ spoke of the Kingdom, he included those whom others passed over. He brought the solitary into community, and I now know that if I am to make something of this one life I have, I must become this spent, given offering to those who are praying for a love-miracle in their own life. We could be their answer if we simply give ourselves away. If we get out of our own way...out of His way...and let broken hearts - given hearts - reach out. And if we find ourselves too busy "serving God" to let this exchange happen, maybe we're more Pharisee than disciple as we tithe on our anise & cumin (Matthew 23:23) and forget that the Kingdom of God "is not a matter of eating and drinking...but of peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17). The Kingdom of God is right in our midst, but we can miss it entirely if we're so consumed with all our activity, all our rule-keeping, all our doctrine...but we don't have enough love to meet the broken, the cast-offs, the shamed, the hurting and welcome them into a safe place for their souls to be soothed. Our Lord Himself showed us the way. 

Oh God, forgive us for not seeing the way and walking in it. We pray for You to show up big in our churches and lives, but miss that You've showed up already. You're already here...but we've missed you because we overlooked where you were. You were there when that elderly man needed help with his groceries; You were there when that lady sat on the bench in the cemetery, lost in her own thoughts and you wondered if you should sit with her and ask why she was there...but you didn't. You were there when that solider who has recently moved to your area needed a family to take him in a make him feel like he has someplace in all this new to call "home." You are there when that child who comes from a broken family enters the house for piano lessons every week and simply needs a drop of grace to carry her until she comes next time. You are everywhere, but we think these things are too ordinary for You. That we're too ordinary. 

 The Kingdom of God is not what you think. And if we are to discover it and be in the center of it, we must get our finite minds around the fact that all these other things...all this busyness..."shall be added" but they are not our first pursuit (Matthew 6:33). That the Gospel compels us to live with our eyes open to wherever God might reveal Himself on any particular day at anytime. That we cannot live out the Light unless we live a given existence. Unless we become a "living sacrifice" in a world that takes and is all about what benefits the self. 

 If any of us want to find the heart of the Gospel, the right-center of the Christian life and the Kingdom, we have to understand that it will not always appear as we expect it to. And God help us all not to miss it when it does!