what even is the kingdom?
Out on the beach in the
early morning, clouds still covering the sky overhead, mist still clearing
among the hills behind me, I walked. Slowly and silently. Letting the pounding
of the crashing waves be my thoughts, my breath, my heartbeat.
I didn’t quite know what
had pulled me out of bed in the darkness of early morning or what had caused me
to make the journey to the ocean as the sun rose. Perhaps to be near something
else that was wild and uncontrollable and chaotic, but offered the hope of peace.
Perhaps to gaze out into the vast unknown and let the horizon reassure me that
there is more than I can see.
Perhaps I came because the
ocean is the place that invites the turmoil of bitter questions at a great
Unknown. It is the materialization of paradox - danger and beauty, life and
death, storm and calm, unmoving and unpredictable, simple and utterly complex.
The expanse dwarfs me and my questions and isn’t threatened. I am just a tiny,
tiny girl who is ankle-deep; what harm can I do?
And so I walked. Just
walked.
And then I stopped, and
turned outward.
I didn’t ask for him to
come, I didn’t want to force him, but there he stood beside me. Both of us
gazing across the waters like we’ve done so many times. He seemed calm, as
always, but my mind raced and tumbled with the tumult of fears, doubts,
accusations, and questions. I didn’t dare make eye contact, waves of sorrow and
anger crashing one upon another in my soul. I didn’t dare ask for explanations,
tired and afraid of disappointment. I didn’t dare speak at all at first,
wrapped up in shame. Ashamed that I was not the warrior of unwavering faith I
had wanted to be for him. Ashamed that I was not the apostle he’d called me to
be. Ashamed that I was stuck here, sunk into the wet sand of confusion and
pain. Ashamed over both my ignorance and my desperation to understand.
Somehow my question
surfaced from the foaming waters. Everything had seemed clear before, but now
my vision was so murky that I wondered if hope existed, if all of this was going
anywhere, if I was following anything more than an idea.
“What even is the kingdom?”
I winced as I asked
it, feeling a deep pain in my gut - the vulnerable pain of breaking a long
silence and fearing only more silence in return. I still only saw him in my
peripheral vision as we stared into the waves.
He answered in that
beautifully familiar voice.
“The kingdom,” he said, “is
like a seed - ” as he said it he reached his hand and touched me gently above
my navel with just one finger - “that grows into the largest of trees, and the
birds come and make nests in its branches.”
And that was all.
Not a word of it was
new.
But the touch - in that
touch he gave me a vision of something. The kingdom like a seed sown in the
hungry soil of my stomach aching for fruition. The kingdom like a seed planted
in my womb where it grows and is born into life. The kingdom like a seed
embedded in the impulses of my gut that feel contrary to God but perhaps come
from the places of deepest union with him.
In that touch I caught a
tiny glimpse of the kingdom rooted in me, branches growing to hold all the
fluttering heartaches, circumstances, loved ones, and worries, and lay them
safely to rest.
And in that touch I felt
the reassurance I hadn’t dared seek: that I was exactly who he wanted, and
exactly where he wanted; that I wasn’t falling behind or slowing him down; that
my wandering was still my following; that he was calling me again; that he had
been growing the kingdom in me all along.
And so I continued again
down the beach as the waves still crashed. Continued with my unanswered
questions, continued with my sorrows and angers, continued with my
uncertainties. But most of all, I just continued.
written July 30, 2019
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