The Kingdom Come

“When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory.” Hope and I have walked around the church building this week, singing the hymn we learned in childhood. We were both raised in church contexts that rightly looked forward to an eternity with Christ, while simultaneously longing to escape the world we were in. As I studied this week’s sermon text- Luke 17:20-37, most of these verses were very familiar. While I sang hymns in church, I also grew up listening to D.C. Talk’s “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” and stayed up all night reading the next installment in Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series. I watched the times. Following WWII, Israel had become a nation state, and surely this meant Christ would return in my lifetime. I waited for sacrifices to resume on the Temple Mount and speculated who the Anti-Christ really was- maybe Bill Clinton, but more likely a Pope. Miss me with death and tribulation, I was ready to meet Jesus in the sky and head to heaven. 

I thought I KNEW this passage because I’d read it and heard it preached and taught on so many times. It was a text that gave us a little insight into the return of Christ. But this week as I read, the Holy Spirit highlighted different verses. 

“Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21)

Yes, the Son of Man will return. 

And also, the kingdom of God is in our midst. 

Here and now. 

You and I are the outposts of the kingdom. The Spirit of our King lives in us and gives us the eyes to see, the hands to serve, and the hearts to love our neighbors as ourselves. When he returns, I want him to find me, not lamenting his absence or trying to predict his return, but busy doing the work of his kingdom. 

God gives us the courage to be a voice for the voiceless, to pursue justice and righteousness, to perform acts of mercy, and to actively participate in the advancing of his kingdom not by might or power as the empires of the world do, but by the transforming and renewing power of the Spirit. We’ve been given the privilege to be Christ’s ambassadors, equipped with all we need to do the good works he prepared for us to do. I pray we will be a generation who stewards it well, so that it may be on earth as it is in heaven. 

Natalie