Kingdom Building

September 16, 2019

Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
   my heart is sick.
Hark, the cry of my poor people
   from far and wide in the land:
‘Is the Lord not in Zion?
   Is her King not in her?’
(‘Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
   with their foreign idols?’)
‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
   and we are not saved.’
For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
   I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. –Jeremiah 8:18-21

Our world seems to be at a crossroad or perhaps more complex in a matrix a place or point of origin or growth*. The Israelites encountered such an event in the days of Jeremiah mid 600’s BC. He saw the way his people were distracted from the challenges of changes that were necessary for their survival. They continually followed the lesser ways of greed and power struggles, of trading the God of Abraham, Moses, and David for the god’s they could shape with their hands. Rather than step into a new tomorrow not being sure what the future held they chose to follow the path of self-righteousness and self-aggrandizement.  They chose what Paul would later call the world.

God seeks people that know how to build a kingdom that is ruled by love erected on God’s love and love for one another. God created all humans with such capacity. When he finds those who share God’s vision, God travels with them, communes with them, and delights in their development of that kingdom and they respond in kind. We, too, must make that decision whether we have the faith and the courage to follow God’s ways taking a step closer to God’s kingdom or get more and more mired in the wisdom of the world.

Prayer:
Lord, lift me up, and let me stand
By faith on Canaan’s tableland;
A higher plane than I have found,
  Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. Amen.                                                                                        

*http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/matrix
**From I’m pressing on the upward way by Johnson Oatman Jr. See at https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/396

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.