The Kingdom of God is like....

Today at St. Edward's we celebrated Christ the King Sunday--a celebration of the Kingship of Christ and, by extension, the Kingdom of God. While the lessons appointed for the day, especially the Gospel lesson, are predictably focused on Christ's identity as a king whose kingdom "is not of this world," they got me to thinking about what we think about and picture when we think about the Kingdom of God. While driving home from a funeral yesterday, I happened to hear the following song on K-LOVE, a Christian radio station:



What you need to know is that the little girl he is referring to is his youngest daughter, who last year at 5 years old was tragically killed in an accident. I was particularly stuck by his image of heaven:

But in my mind’s eye I can see a place
Where Your glory fills every empty space.
All the cancer is gone,
Every mouth is fed,
And there’s no one left in the orphans’ bed.
Every lonely heart finds their one true love,
And there’s no more goodbye,
And no more not enough,
And there’s no more enemy. No more.

Today was also our Stewardship Ingathering Sunday where we collect the pledges from members for 2010. As I talked about in my sermon, what greater purpose can there be than to be ambassadors, representatives, of that sort of Kingdom? What a privilege to invest our time, our talents, and our treasure in partnership with God to whom we pray "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord.