kingdom & me

I haven't felt very creative lately. Weeds. The weeds of life have been pestering me, cropping up around my ankles, and I've been madly trying to root them out. Moving and changing jobs again has meant many are the "cares of life" , and of course, many are the questions: have I made a good decision? was the timing right? should I have waited until I was more secure financially? The questions are really kind of rhetorical at this point. The deed is done. I am moved, employed, and living HERE now. These questions are like a favourite record (yep, the vinyl type) that has a groove where you have most often played it, and once it plays through that section, it just slips right back to the beginning. Over and over again.

Thankfully, during this present round of questioning, I have been able to ask a better question: Lord, are you with me on all this? And what are you up to?

ANSWER: What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself?

I've been thinking hard about his answer which was a question and wasn't the direct answer to anything I asked anyway. But my soul knew the congruency right away in that answer. The last two years have been ALL about this. Why should Jesus, who has promised me the Kingdom -- in the here and now as well as later -- give me everything I want, albeit good, if what I sacrifice, to have it, is my truest self ? The self that was borne of his heart, the me that he knows is becoming? The soul that is uniquely being conformed to his nature?

So, he put his foot down. And what I have discovered is that part of what is restored to us and given to us in the Kingdom, part of that pearl of great price, is actually....me. The me that he knew existed and knew was hidden by sin, shame, and sadness is part of what is promised to us. I used to to have the idea that you sacrifice everything -- including your truest self -- to gain all the good of the Kingdom. Jesus is not a bad trade up. But my conclusion in this banked on the idea that my truest self must have been bad, and therefore in need of getting rid of. Isn't that what we read about all the time in the Bible? Die to yourself daily, forsake your old life? This is different, and unfortunately, I had thrown the best part of me -- my little piece of the mosaic of the Body of Christ -- to sink in a cesspool, because I thought it belonged there.

I and my me IS Kingdom. Who would have thought?