A Momentary Kingdom

Dave Brisbin | 6.3.18 Dialogue from movie: “You’ll never believe what just happened!” “If it’s bad news, I generally do believe it…” Unfortunately true. Why is it that we generally do believe the bad news over the good? If you think on it, we’re shaped much more by the hurts and traumas we’ve experienced in life than by the joys and pleasures. Pain demands strategies for survival that we build from earliest childhood—strategies that become perceptions, attitudes, behavior, and beliefs that are sturdy and persist indefinitely after the painful circumstances are gone. How do we pull our personal pendulums back to a centered position? In Romans, Paul speaks of presenting ourselves as living sacrifices and renewing our minds to prove God’s will. What does that mean? How does it help? To put that into practical terms is to line it up with Jesus at Matthew 6, when he tells us not to worry about the future but to seek Kingdom first, right now. Putting it all together is to realize that all life is always today and that the Kingdom to which Jesus and Paul are pointing is always now/today as well—in fact it’s a momentary Kingdom. The choice to renew our minds and behavior and attitudes is always now, always a moment by moment proposition. There is no super switch we throw or prayer we say to enter Kingdom once and for all. There is only this moment and the choice we make to be fully here, present to God’s spirit infused in each other and everything around us or not. It’s like a string of pearls—it only becomes a necklace the moment there are more pearls than string.