In one of those moments of quiet contemplation during this week, I had this thought:
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a borderless country. We keep driving and driving to find the edge or the line, but it's never there because the Kingdom has no bounds."
Think about it. When you look at a map, there are clear demarcations of boundaries between states, nations, bodies of water. We fight wars with rocks and rubber bullets and IEDs over which side of a particular geographical border line belongs to which ethnic or religious group. We erect walls and fences as a means to protect "our" borders.
But when we live in the Kingdom... we are not just one nation, but one everything, under God.
I saw a glimpse of that last night on the news. They were showing scenes from Norway with the first of the funerals for the teenaged victims gunned down last week by the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Christian terrorist. The girl, 18 year-old Bano Rashid, was a refugee from Iraq who was described by all who knew her as "Sunshine." Leading the funeral procession was an imam and a Lutheran pastor. The image spoke the proverbial thousand words in recognition of Sunshine as a child loved by a God that doesn't separate Muslims from Christians, especially as a nation mourned her senseless death. God, whether as seen through Christ or called Allah, accepts the tears of all of us. Sadly, this is a message lost on Anders Breivik, and those in the radical fundementalist religious camps. They are still driving looking for the border of the Kingdom, and in their quest to be right have fallen for the mirage of a border.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a banquet table brimming with exotic and ordinary food and drink where a new chair is always available for someone to take a seat."
Oh, to have a world where people could really believe this is true!
1 comment:
We must live as if there is no border, the 'table' is ready and everyone is welcome. Then more people could really believe.
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