Today’s reflection is from the Dwell scripture listening app.
The Son and the Father and the Spirit have an eternal kingdom of perfect harmony, beauty, justice, and abundance. Love is law there. Not a law followed grudgingly, but joyfully, because it is sheer delight to share in the communion it makes possible. This realm where God’s way is done is the “kingdom of God.” It is from everlasting to everlasting. What changed with the birth of Jesus was God’s gift of a way in. To those who receive Christ as king, he gives the power to become powerless — to give up supreme rulership of our own little kingdoms and become like children. Children of the King, happy to follow in the Father’s footsteps and ready to trust him with our lives. But the more established our own kingdoms are, the harder they are to relinquish. Henri Nouwen asks, “Do I want to break away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrender myself so absolutely to God’s love that a new person can emerge?” Not everyone does…Each of us must grapple with the government Jesus ushered in. Most of us want God to set things right in the world so that we can flourish. But there can’t be any setting things right unless we let him set us right. Let him root out false sources of comfort, self-esteem, and deliverance. Give him authority to rule over our decisions, to revise our likes and dislikes, to form within us a loving disposition toward all people. Give him free reign to remake us completely so that we can have what Richard Foster calls a “new order of life.” The journey from the kingdom of self-rule to the kingdom of God might sound too far and too difficult. But if we are willing to receive him, Jesus will meet us and lead us all the way.
Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” [Genesis 1:26-27]ernment and peace there shall be no end…” (Isaiah 9:6a, 7a)
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