Once,
having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus
replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,
nor will people say 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God
is within you."
Luke
17:20-21
The
last time I posted on this blog (scroll down to see), I spoke briefly about
"signposts." The idea is that we Christians ought to be signposts, manifesting
the kingdom of God that is to come by the things we do in our present lives.
Recently,
that notion was reinforced to me by Dallas Willard in his book Hearing God, only he used the word
"outposts" instead of "signposts." "When we align
ourselves with the kingdom of Christ," he wrote, "we become outposts
of that kingdom." He suggested that we ask God to show us how we can be
outposts for the kingdom in our homes, our work and our neighborhoods.
What
does that look like, I wondered. In my previous blog I mentioned Chuck Colson's
work in prisons as an example. But we can't all be Chuck Colsons. How does it
look for us normal people, in normal, everyday life? I asked God to help me
keep an eye out for examples as I went through the days ahead.
The
first example God showed me was my own sweet wife, Marianne. We were on a very
crowded shuttle bus on our way from outlying parking to the terminal at DIA.
Marianne found a seat, but I had to stand holding onto one of those straps and
bouncing back and forth between the person in front of me and the person behind
while trying to maintain possession of my briefcase and camera bag.
We
were jostling along, intermittently accelerating and braking, when I looked
down and saw Marianne sitting there peacefully praying. She's praying for our
safe travel, I thought, as we would soon be boarding a plane bound for Mexico.
But, no, it turns out she was praying for the woman across the aisle who was
sitting there with crutches.
OTK.
Outpost of the kingdom.
The
woman probably threw her crutches down the next day without even knowing she
had benefitted from the prayers of God's outpost on that shuttle bus.
A
couple weeks later, we were at the urologist's office where I was undergoing a
very painful biopsy procedure. When it was over, and I walked back into the
waiting room, this was the scene I encountered:
Although
it was a large waiting room, with many chairs, there were only two people in
the room, seated just a few chairs apart. It was totally quiet. One of the
people was Marianne who was praying intently. The other was a woman who, just
as intently, was watching Marianne.
When
I entered the scene, the woman turned her gaze to me, immediately discerning
that I was the one being lifted up in prayer. Her eyes followed me all the way
over to where Marianne was sitting, still praying until the moment I touched
her shoulder.
Obviously,
this was not a miracle healing. But the look of wonder in the other woman's
eyes let me know she had gotten a little glimpse of the Kingdom of God – a
kingdom where people communicate with God unceasingly out of love and
compassion for one another.
Lord, may the changes you
have wrought in us open the eyes and be a blessing to all those whose paths we
cross in our daily lives.
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