The Kingdom of Heaven

The Kingdom of Heaven is like having a good day. When you are having a good day nothing is any trouble but when you are having a bad day the slightest thing can set you off, the smallest challenge appears too much.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like falling in love. When you are falling in love you are energised and inspired. You would contemplate, and fearlessly undertake, spectacular plans to woo the beloved, to honour, save, inspire, to brighten their day, to make them smile, and you would think nothing of it.

The Righteousness of the Kingdom of Heaven is like falling in love, in that it is not possible to conceive, much less carry out, an act that could bring harm or unhappiness to the beloved. Thus, to live in the Kingdom, or of Kingdom vlaues, is to live the sincere, tender, passionate regard a lover has for the beloved. 

The Righteousness of the Kin-Dom flows from sincere love: from the love of the Father – the Source who made all things possible – to the love of one’s fellows, one’s family, the knowing of who make possible the almost endless multiplication of love, joy, and opportunity. Indeed, the only true expression of the sincerity and depth of your loving appreciation of the Father is to be found in the bestowal of your affection upon His children – your brethren – in the form of loving service, the Father requires nothing else from you.

When Jesus invited us to fellowship with him in the Kin-dom, when he called us to fulfil our destinies as children of God, he set one simple command: ‘Love one another as I have loved you, then will all men know that you are my disciples.’

Jesus said; ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I make these gifts not as the world gives - by measure - I give each of you all you will receive.’ We should remember that peace is the shadow of faith and if we wish to share in the peace of Jesus of Nazareth we must share in his faith. His faith in his Father’s loving overcare was invincible and it swept aside all anxiety about the future. He attended faithfully to his present duties and declared that, ‘sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof,’ having thus attended to these we may rest knowing that our tomorrows are in the unerring hands of the Father.

The power of his love conquered every belligerent, self-seeking, vengeful tendency of the flesh, and crafted in its stead a peace-loving, service oriented, love inspired, life of consecrated devotion; a life worthy of the adoration and fit for the inspiration of all. It was through the very intense power of the faith and love of Jesus that the Father became so fully real to him and could therefore be so profoundly revealed through him. Thus could Jesus so fearlessly declare, ‘You that have seen me have seen the Father.’ God drew so very near and thereby effected such a profound transformation of His son that his very life became an instrument of the divine to effect the transformation and salvation of the world.

Jesus was not a deceiver, neither was he self-deceived, nor yet was he deluded, when he declared, ‘I am the Truth, the Way, and the Life,’ for in his life did the Father establish the way from sin to salvation, in his life could be found sustaining nourishment for the spiritually hungry because he was so filled with God, in his life can be found freedom from fear and liberty from moral enslavement.

He came that we might have life and have it in abundance; abundant love, abundant laughter, abundant service, abundant joy, abundant hope, abundant peace, and abundant thanks. If we would enter fully into his joy, we must enter fully into his love; if we would enter fully into his peace, we must enter fully into his faith.