praying for the Kingdom of God

Well, this theme has come up three times this week - in class on Thursday night, very strongly when I was praying sometime after Thursday and before today, and this morning in church (from Woody's sermon).

I have mostly questions about what it means to pray for the Kingdom (and experiences that strengthen and underscore my questions) - how do we figure out, from all Jesus' parables and references in the Gospels, what exactly the Kingdom of God is? How then do we pray for it? How then do we live with the Kingdom of God at the center of what we do? How do we live with it among us and within us? How do we receive and also bring it on earth? What does it look like? How can we recognize it?

My experiences of the Kingdom of God come in small snapshots, little bits of complete goodness that show up every once in a while, moments of deep awareness that all things shall be made right. When I am sitting in between a recovering drug addict friend and a professor friend in church, I feel like the Kingdom of God is here and is coming. When I am walking on the street and there is some resilient patch of grass, or a yellow flower stubbornly poking up from a crack in the concrete, I feel like the Kingdom of God is here and is coming. When I am sitting with sisters and brothers that make up my small group family in quiet conversation, and sometimes in silence, echoing similar frustrations and desires in my heart, I feel like the Kingdom of God is here and is coming. When I meet a sister in Albuquerque and gather with her small group family and take communion with complete strangers, I am made aware of the beautiful gift of the Body of Christ and I feel like the Kingdom of God is here and is coming. When I remember the times I sat with P'Wara and P'Jim on bamboo mats on the veranda of the mother-baby unit of Agape home, eating mangos and praying in our native languages (English, Thai, Karen), I feel like the Kingdom of God is here and is coming. I feel it when I experience true hospitality and extend it, when I am sitting on bamboo mats in my Burmese friends' homes, when I am praying as an act of rebellion against the status quo. I feel it when I groan over the state of things in this world and when I see evidence of the Holy Spirit working around me. I feel it when I am living in the tension between the now and the not yet.

God's kingdom is coming. God's kingdom has come. It's among and within us. May it come on earth as it is in heaven.