Every day is a new day. I have a great deal of fondness for Ann of Green Gables who said "each day is new with no mistakes in it". I like this way of living. I find that I make too many mistakes to let them bleed over into the next day, it is important to cut them off and wipe the slate clean. I believe truly, if one could do this, one would be living life in the Kingdom.
Thomas Keating, one of those people who make me feel calmer just reading what he writes, says we should look at our strengths and our weaknesses, our successes and our failures and say, 'oh well'. Just dream for a moment with me: what if we could do this?! What if we could do this for ourselves, and for others. Oh well. What kind of freedom would we find in an 'oh well' world?
Some of you are already thinking about how this wouldn't work. I hear you, and I even sympathize. I mean where would the joy come from without the victory dance in the end zone? What about the people who make messing stuff up a way of life?! Do we just say 'oh well' and clean up time after time? What about a work of excellence? What about bringing the best fruits that we have to God? What about working towards a goal, striving to take hold of that which Christ has taken hold for us? Yeah, what about all that?!
I don't have lots of answers, I just wonder about this: what if we lived that way? What if I was loved and accepted, totally and completely, just as I am and you were too? What if we saw the good stuff and smiled and saw the bad stuff and smiled? What if we rejoiced together and mourned together without self incrementation or finger pointing, or finding the reason something didn't work. What if we stopped fixing ourselves and one another, and let God do what God does with us and be content with that? Would that change the world and make the Kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven?
While I am being totally revolutionary here, let's run to the edge of fantasy and imagine what it would mean to live in God's Kingdom now. If you work hard, can you imagine a state where we are so filled with the love of God and the love of others? What would we bicker about? Who would we gossip about if we were filled with love for everyone? Who would we compete against? Who's loss would we celebrate? The dynamics of relationship would change, the priorities in our lives would turn upside and we would live in a world, the opposite of the one described by Winston Church: where all the things of value are priced cheaply, and the things that don't matter at all are the most expensive. Let me just say this, before I get off the train to Never Never Land, why is it we don't want to live here?
I get the world is not ready to change it's vision, but is the Church? Surely the Church, the Bride of Christ, would desire at the core and center of its vision and hope to be this Kingdom on Earth. We pray it every week! Wonder if this could be the year we mean it and begin to take the intentional and deliberate steps to allow God to create in us clean hearts and the love that makes this possible.
