I woke up at 4:45 this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was exhausted and my thoughts were spinning. I tried everything I could to fall back asleep. I listened to the audio version of the Chronicles of Narnia until finally it was time to get ready for morning prayer. This week I was leading. We have been praying through the Lord’s Prayer since the beginning of September and my week was “on earth as it is in heaven”.
I sat up last night praying about it. I thought to myself “when we say that, what is the ‘heaven’ we mean?” None of us have actually seen heaven, so what is it that are we even asking for when we say that?
So…I went through the bible and started to write down every usage I could find of the term “the kingdom of heaven”.
As I read, I noticed phrases like “those who’s come to me as children” “the first being last” and parables of “a God who gives to all from His own heart of generosity, not based on what each person has earned.” I was reminded of this phrase I used to hear much more commonly…
“the upside down kingdom”.
As I look into the way God describes as being his own, the “way” of heaven…it seems it often upends our understanding and our ways of doing things. It often requires a shifting of what often feels like our natural way of ordering things.
(and it’s not lost on my that I lived that out this morning.)
A sleep-deprived, adrenal fatigued, thoughts-spinning and just barely on time to start because I spilled something Toni, just showed up with a “yes”.
I didn’t “feel” super spiritual.
To be perfectly honest, I felt ill-prepared and like I was out the gate already behind. BUT, once again, I’m reminded of the power of a yes. I’m reminded that somehow God’s strength can be made perfect in my weakness and how every single truly powerful and impactful moment of my life has happened when I don’t feel I’ve got it covered or figured out or mastered but what I do have is my heart to show up and offer God something that costs me something.
And when I do, I think what happens is that I get to experience the very thing I read up on.
The upside down kingdom of God comes rushing in and somehow the God who gives to all not according to what they worked for and earned but out of the abundance of his own heart of generosity shows up and does more than I could imagine. I showed up with what felt like two measly little coins to contribute. I got on that stage exhausted but willing.
We do this thing when we start morning prayer where we all stand up and popcorn read the verses in the passage we’re praying around the room from beginning to the end. So I shared my heart and we read through the Lord’s Prayer together. We read it once but, somehow it didn’t quite feel like enough, so we read it through again. And then, I prayed for us. I told God we were listening.
I told God we were listening and that we just wanted to know what it would look like for our city, for our homes, our jobs, our relationships, and the world to begin to look more like the upside down kingdom. Not in a colonizing or conquesting way but for it to truly be on earth and it is in the “kingdom of heaven”.
Then I stepped off of that stage, sat down and closed my eyes to listen. One by one, I heard some of the strongest, most heartfelt prayers I have ever heard in that space. Prayers for hearts and homes and each other and the other churches in the city. Prayers for the safety of those effected by the hurricane, that ways would be made and that, somehow, people who are stranded would have everything they need. We wrote out prayers in the front of 12 journals for 12 of the pastors of other churches in our city.
This year one of our church’s goals was to “wage war on isolation” so we’ve been working through praying and writing prayers and encouragement on cards with the names of people in our church. For a few months we prayed for all of the families with kids in kids church and now we’re working through couples and individuals. One at a time. The rhythm of weekly prayer at 7am with a consistent group of some of the sweetest hearted people I think I’ve met has been such a gift of this season. Church hasn’t always been a great experience for me, at times, it is still quite painful to see what it has become, but I just wanted you to know that somewhere, there are people praying for orphans and widows and for the things that aren’t right in this world and praying that to be part of things changing and those same people are actively involved in their day to day lives with trying to help that happen. I just want to remind you that people can be messy but God in someone’s life can still produce some really beautiful things and that even when you don’t feel like you’ve got what it takes, God can do some pretty cool things with a simple “yes”.
