Friday, December 2, 2016

Outside Reading #4- November 30, 2016- Peace to the Kingdom

“for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17


The kingdom of God is a kingdom made of three things: righteousness, peace, and joy. These must be mighty supporting and strong to support the kingdom of the Wholly Other. This is a kingdom beyond the physical, that can only be experienced through its liminal gates of faith. Although there are three, let’s place the attention on the peace in the midst of righteousness and joy. It is the linker between these two that makes it all possible. As discussed in another blog, peace comes from a stance of being in right standing between the Wholly Other and yourself. From there, it sparks an inner stillness and tranquility that is the support work for the fruit that is joy. Joy from the root system of peace is grounded in the righteous soil. The joy expresses to the world that the crop of peace is ripe and ready for all the world to know. To the kingdom of God, peace within the heart will be the ticket to enter into the pearly gates. It separates those that are righteous and those that are not. This passage of peace describes to me, in a way, a snapshot of all the lessons learned through the readings and lectures in class. Man’s journey to communicate with the sacred and holy, and to me, the answer is the receiving of peace and abiding in it as well. It is like a royal garb that displays one’s inheritance of the kingdom, accessed now. This is the liminal experience that has everlasting results.

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