Tash and I were at a Wedding this weekend for Tash's best friend Alice, who she's known since they were at Primary School; Alice was the main reason that Tash decided to follow Jesus!
Alice married a great friend of ours, Ross, who is a Baptist minister at a big church up the road from where we live. As you can imagine, the day was incredibly spirit filled and a joyous occasion.
During the ceremony, 1 Corinthians 13 was read out - a familiar passage to many of us, it's the love it patient, love is kind, love does not boast etc. etc. chapter of the bible. It's an incredible part of the word of God but I was drawn to a part of it that harmonised with some of my recent thinking about what the Kingdom of God is, what it looks like, and how we see it in the here and now.
….We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled…. 12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
1 Cor 13 v8-13 MSG
The Message translation from which this is taken puts it so eloquently into words that I was really moved to the core of me, more so than ever before after having listened to the familiar chapter.
The Kingdom of God is here in Earth. Right now.
We don’t yet see it in its full form because the world is still full of brokenness and hurt, but we catch glimpses of it. In a previous post I wrote about the little things of the world where we see God - wherever those things are, we catch glimpses of the Nature of God, his Kingdom and his presence.
"The Complete"in that passage is when the Kingdom of God will be made on this Earth, and the whole world will be filled with the presence of God everywhere.There will be no separation from him, we will know God just as he knows us we will live without pain, guilt, shame and suffering.
But we can see it now! "We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist" but St Paul tells us how to get those glimpses:
Have faith & Trust in God
Hope in the promise of things to come, new life and a renewal in forgiveness
Love - most importantly - Love Each Other.
