Several years ago I attended a scripture study about the Kingdom of God. This is one of my favorite topics (because who doesn’t love the idea of a kingdom) but its also one of the most elusive. Most of the times when I look up verses about the Kingdom of God, I read the words of Jesus that start with “The Kingdom of God is like…” It reminds me of Paul’s words about love in 1 Corinithians when he says: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” Its almost as though he can’t directly define love. All he can do is say, essentially, “I know it when I see it. Its like this and like that…”
Which is why I love reflecting on this moment several years ago when the Bible study leader asked us: “when’s a recent moment when you felt that you were participating in the kingdom of God?”
I knew my answer right away as I’d seen it in real time the weekend before. I had been working my job as a family services coordinator at Habitat for Humanity in Baltimore. We had just completed the rehabilitation of a row house not three blocks from the one my roommates and I were sharing just out of college. The homeowner I was working with was a single social worker who had adopted her twin daughters through the foster care system and was seeking a stable place in town to raise them.
As the build came to its completion and Ophelia prepared to purchase her home, the high school students that had banded together to help build the house arrived with their parents and dozens of other volunteers who had put in countless hours on this once abandoned house, making it whole and habitable again.
As Ophelia’s family and pastor gathered beside her to bless the home, I turned around and realized that this quiet city street had filled within the previous hour with cars and taxi cabs. There were a couple of BMW’s and a Mercedes as I recall (announcing the presence of the major donor’s who had been involved) alongside the pick up trucks and beater cars from our Americorp volunteers who worked for minimum wage during their service year to help transform these houses on Baltimore’s up and coming east side.
As the house dedication ceremony began, I saw volunteers and neighbors sitting up high, looking down, from the scaffolding across the street. Wealthy individuals in suits crowded the streets below alongside construction workers covered in dust. And lastly, there was Ophelia, the star of the hour, standing on her very own stoop with her two beautiful girls, smiling from ear to ear in front of a house that she had helped to build, enjoying every minute.
Gosh, if I’ve not said it here, let me say it now. Habitat for Humanity is my favorite charity. Hands down. I’ve never seen an organization so effectively bring together the wealthy, the poor, the skilled, the unskilled, democrats, republicans and everyone in between. That is to say, I’ve never seen an organization so effectively reflect the kingdom of God. I remember every aspect of that morning and it was some 15 years ago at this point.
Jesus has trouble defining the kingdom of God because it evades definition. Its mysterious, like love is mysterious. But I think we know it when we experience it, just as I did that morning when all of those people came together to help a woman raise her children in a stable place. Jesus tells us that the kingdom comes from humble beginnings like a seed, or a bit of yeast (Luke 13) that of their own merit don’t look or seem like much but that transform into a tree for the birds to sit in or a delicious loaf of sustaining bread when the work is done.
I’m thinking about this now as I consider what’s next in life. For me and for you. I’m sure, like me, you are wondering where the world is headed. Maybe, like me, your community has fallen apart. Maybe you’ve lost a job. Maybe the people you thought you could count on got caught up in the stressors of this experience and showed their true colors. Maybe you’re the one who’s changed…so much so that you need to leave a community or a friendship because its no longer healthy. If this is the case, I am so sorry. These are real losses and it can be destabilizing at best. Crushing at worst. I am with you in this as I am also in the swirl of all of this, wondering where the heck I am going to land.
Here’s the only thing that has gotten me through times like this. Christ’s words in Matthew 6:33: “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
What are “these things?” Its all that we’ve either lost or fear we will lose. What we will eat, what we will drink, what we will wear, what we have stored, what we have labored for, who we can count on…These are all legitimate things to want and as Jesus points out in the verses before the 33rd one in Matthew chapter 6, “your Heavenly Father knows that you need them.”
This is such calming news to me. I trust the Father. I have more reason to trust him than I ever have and that’s after two really devastating years. Because in all of that devastation I have not failed to have what I’ve truly needed: His provision and Fatherly care.
So how do we seek the kingdom? I don’t know what this looks like for you but for me it looks like seeking out the things that stir up my heart towards the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Friendship, family, time alone, time in nature, beautiful meals, beautiful spaces. A kingdom life post-apocalypse will look much like tending to the seeds that God and I have identified for future planting in the past and wondering if now is the time to put them in the ground. And really, I’m finding by the hour that the answer to this is “Yes. It’s time” Why wouldn’t we put them in the ground now? The field we had been tending has burned down and its time to start over.
One particular seed I am planting is starting a little instagram account called “Likeamother_interiors.” Check it out! I think the spaces we live in can nurture and invite kingdom-like life when we tend to them and so I want to connect with other folks who feel the same. I picked the title “Like a mother” because God is working something out in my spirit around the concepts of motherhood and distinctly feminine leadership that I want to spend time considering. Also, truthfully, there have been some days in this pandemic where I’ve wanted to shout “like a mother F$%*@!” At the top of my lungs because I’ve been so mad I can’t stand it. Pandemics make me mad. Injustice makes me angry. People behaving selfishly makes me want to scream. I believe this little account could be a healthy channel for some of those feelings as I look around at the space I am inhabiting right now and find that God has been in it the entire time.
So here’s our homework, as far as I can see it. Think of a time when you felt most alive. Think of a time when the flow of an experience was so profound that you forgot about yourself for a hot minute and were really in the moment. Now plant a seed from that experience and put it down in the new soil you find yourself standing on. Then, share what you’re doing with a friend. This is how we will start over. Small steps towards big trees and loaves of breads that sustain and provide rest for ourselves and for others at the same time. Isn’t that magnanimous? (My favorite vocabulary word this pandemic) Of course it is. I believe we can have more streets filled with rich and poor, skilled and unskilled. It appears Jesus thinks so too: “Seek first the kingdom of God and all this will be added unto you.”
Courtney Beck Writes 