The Current and Coming Kingdom

“The Kingdom is coming, but the Kingdom is here. That’s why we’re homesick, and it’s also why we might as well get busy planting.” ~Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark

For most of my recent memory, I’ve been running circles around and through the idea of the Kingdom that is both here and still to come.

Seems to me followers of Jesus can’t make up their minds whether they want to make much of the present age or if it’s a lost cause and only the next world is worth anything.

But there simply isn’t a choice here.

Imagine inheriting a small fixer-upper of a house and putting in thousands of hours of work updating, building, and adding, all while knowing that at some point in the coming weeks or months the house will be bulldozed and rebuilt into the mansion you were trying to painstakingly build brick by brick.

Sounds like a lot of wasted effort, doesn’t it?

But that’s the paradox of praying “Your Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

We get to be active in building, shaping, dreaming, and struggling to fashion and create a shadow of what is to come. Our involvement should make the approaching reality that much sweeter.

With every daydream of what could be, we get a glimpse of the already-printed blueprints for that future mansion.

With every heavy brick laid, neighbors catch the vision of what might be… and with a simple invite, the many future rooms are claimed by guests that will fill the halls with laughter, love, and community.

With the end of every tiresome day of toil comes anticipation for the deep rest and comfort in the next age. But without the labor, there is nothing from which to rest.

Now don't get me wrong, if we don’t pick up our hammers and wheelbarrows to build today, it won’t diminish the glory of the coming mansion. And if we make the work today the only thing of consequence, we’ll still eventually move on to our future home whether we want to or not. But a complete embrace of the “today, but not yet” nature of building on the invite of the Maker of this world and the next will, in and of itself, be the fullest realization of all that being human can possibly offer.

Will you grab your shovel and dig deep?