Ordinary Time

Pause

What would our world look like if it were everything God intends? Peace, understanding, comfort, satisfaction, true abundance for everyone—everywhere?

Maybe something like that.

We might never see it in our lifetimes. But in the meantime, there is this place and this moment. The kingdom is keen to break in.

Listen

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38–39

Think

“Kingdom” makes me think of romance—for instance, Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride, where not even the evil prince Humperdinck could stand in the way of true love.

It wasn’t very romantic in real life back then. Emperors and kings lived the high life with banquets and palaces, but life for ordinary folks was pretty hard. If a disease struck your village, there was no doctor or hospital. If the king was a bad ruler, you couldn’t vote him out of office. Life must have seemed uncertain and unfair.

So when Paul writes that nothing can separate us from God’s love—not famine, disease, warfare, human rulers, or cosmic powers—he was describing a kingdom different from anything his audience had experienced. There is no power greater than God, so no matter what comes, you can know that you are in God’s loving care.

Hmm. This kingdom sounds great, but where is it? How can I find it? That’s what this week is all about.

Richard Vinson

Pray

Dear God, help me to enter the kingdom where your love never lets me go. Please begin today. Amen.

Go

Maybe it’s not just a romantic notion. The kingdom comes in things that are very small, but that can become something great; something worth giving everything you have to be part of it.

The kingdom is something fine, worth more than we can imagine. And it is worth all the more when we share what we know about it, though we will never understand it completely.

Go now to give it all away.