Kingdom Come

Days 4 & 5

Matthew 5:1-12

We are little gods and goddesses of our domains. You are waiting give Your kingdom. But we cannot receive it when our hands are stuffed so full of ourselves, when we carry about with us our doings, praying for You to come even as we put hammer to nail on the walls of our fortresses. 

Here is the kingdom, You say. Listen. Here is when My kingdom comes: 

When you know your soul-emptiness. When you see your self-worship, the idols piling up into heaps of rubbish moldering and useless, the fraud of your obsessions revealed. When you sweep it all away, let yourself sit hollow, then I come. 

When you mourn. When you grieve the agony of this sin-gripped place, when you know the pain of loss and sorrow that reminds you this house is not home. The kingdom comes in the whispers of My comfort, in the hands and voices that surround and hold you, in the cracks that let in the light and point you to eternity. 

When you gentle. When you send your roots quiet into the depths of Me, when you still. When you hush the clamor of the domineering and demanding, those who would use their power to rise at others’ expense. You have power, too. Use it to anchor, not to climb, to hold out healing hands and listening ears, to receive the words and wounds of others and offer it all to Me. 

When you crave the light. When you begin to see how your constant consuming leaves you forever unfilled, the pleasures you stuff down no pleasure at all. When your hungers turn to Me, when the thirst of your sorrows plunges you into My water of life, then you will be satisfied.  

When you learn mercy. When the filling of your emptiness teaches you what it is to know compassion, when it floods and overflows you like a river, like hope, then you will learn the secret of my springs of life.

When you make peace. When my life rises in you and your hold on yourself slips away, your hands are free to re-shape the substance of your domain, to build the walls that welcome, to invite without fear those who may enter and find grace.

When you do all this, and still you are insulted, mocked, threatened, tormented, and accused, when the agony of a lost world hurls itself against you, do not despair. You are most blessed. Though it may seem the kingdom is far from you, you have never been closer. It is here, now, within you. Light falls from you like seeds into the earth, and you do not know what garden may grow from your suffering. 

Rejoice and be glad. This hollowing, this letting go, is only for your filling, only for My life to come and make things new. What seems backwards to you is only the reflection of My glory, and one day you will see it full.