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A Day in the Life
By Stew | posted 09/17/2009
"This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven...'" (Matthew 6:9-10)
I say the Lord’s Prayer most mornings. Right off the bat, it says "Thy Kingdom come." If I understand this correctly it is a command that we invoke, not God. Somehow, we are supposed to order God’s Kingdom to appear, pronto, so that we can go out and do His will. First, we command the Kingdom to come, and only then does "Thy will be done" happen. The order is important. God rested on the seventh day, not the first.
This interpretation may seem a little against the grain. "Thy Kingdom come" more typically refers to a future state on Earth that is something like a heavenly United Nations. That future Kingdom may or may not occur in our lifetimes. It’s Heaven, but it’s Heaven Later and not Heaven Now. Heaven Now is when the Kingdom comes today and we then execute God’s will today.
Figuring out God’s will in our own lives is the perpetual human challenge. On the one hand, it’s easy to say that we want to help carry out God’s will. On the other hand, it’s not so easy to know what acts to perform to carry out that will.
To know our Acts for the Day, we need to take the time to stop and open the door to God’s Kingdom and let it come to us. See the ball. Hit it.
What does the Kingdom look like? What is our role in it? What do we do today to make it happen now and not later? God’s Kingdom doesn’t happen because little angels whisper in our ears. Not exactly. Instead it comes when we imagine what our day is going to be like, what the challenges are, what suffering we may have to endure, what rewards may be in store, what priority and importance we place on our activities. You might call it spiritual planning, but it’s spiritual strategic planning within the Kingdom, with special tactical emphasis on when we’re going to most need the Holy Spirit.
Once God’s Kingdom comes to you, it’s then your challenge to impose it on your worldly plans.
[At this point, you should probably be asking What in the world is this guy talking about? Sounds like spiritual gibberish to me! He talks the talk, but I bet he doesn’t walk the talk. In fact, I bet if I read any farther he’ll balk the winning run home...]
Okay. A Day in the Life. Let’s say, for example, you wake up, fall out of bed, drag a comb across your head, and looking up, you notice you’re late. You find your way downstairs and drink a cup of coffee. You look up and notice you’re late, grab your coat and make the bus in seconds flat. You find your way upstairs to your office. But before you actually do any work, you stop to let the Kingdom come. What happens? What do you do? How do you "operationalize" all this spiritual talk? Do you sit and wait for visions? Do you speak silently in tongues?
Here’s how I think the Kingdom comes. It comes when you:
1) List your parts of the Kingdom,
2) Ask yourself questions about those parts of the Kingdom, and then
3) Visualize your answers.
Let’s say the first part of your Kingdom includes your friends and family. You ask yourself silently what you are going to do for each of them today. Then you visualize actually doing it. You ask questions about your workplace, another part of the Kingdom that you affect. Which coworkers are counting on you today? How are you going to be an encouragement to them? What obligations do you need to keep? What work needs to be done?
In other parts of the Kingdom you ask more questions. What bills need to be paid? How do you intend to help the needy and the poor? Are there relationships that you need to mend? Visualize your answers and your intended outcomes.
Of all these activities, what is most important? What can get done today? To get more good done, what’s the right way to order your day? Who can help you carry out your plans? When you get home what are the rewards you expect for your efforts this day? Be sure to make a good night’s sleep part of God’s Kingdom.
Imagine all this.
Internalize it. When you visualize all this, you’re visualizing God’s kingdom for the day. It has come! Now you need to will that Kingdom to happen. Fortunately, after allowing for human imperfection, your will is now part of God’s will. The rest of your day should be straightforward: go now and do what you’ve envisioned, and willed, so that Thy will be done.
It all sounds relatively simple. I’ve described a day in the life, but it’s also a way of life. Some call it Christianity.
Stew can be reached via email here.
