Week 1, day 2: Kingdom = pudding

“your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (NIV)

“may your Kingdom come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Good News)

Bern Leckie writes:

So, how to explain the kingdom of God to a 6-year-old? (Or a grown-up Christian who, like me, associated “kingdom come” with the end of the world and thought maybe we were praying for this to come quickly?)

We started off talking about kingdoms, rulers and rules, but Noah hasn’t been thinking about Brexit as much as Helen and I have. So we discussed where these things play a big part in a child’s life – at school. Noah could quickly name the Queen and King of his school as the head teacher and her deputy. They have important jobs and make rules! But why? Is it to please themselves or feel important? No, they are trying to make a good school, where people can enjoy learning and get on well with each other. In a good kingdom with good rules, people know how to respect each other’s value and live their very best.

This is sounding very grown up and getting somewhere, we thought. So, if you ruled the school, what would you make happen? After some thought, Noah gave us the smile of a boy who knows he has the perfect answer. “People could get second helpings of pudding!”

And that made us think about how wide ranging the whole business of kingdoms and rules really is. If I could, I’d make a rule that chocolate was good for you. But even if I got to be king of the world one day, I still wouldn’t be the ruler of physics.

As we thought and prayed about God’s kingdom, we considered his power and how he chooses to focus it. We can see in Jesus the promise of an end to suffering, hunger, sickness and death. We want to live in a world like that. Some of this looks like justice we can hope, pray and work for in our lifetime.

So we want to be part of God’s kingdom coming on Earth and get better at knowing and doing God’s will, in faith that we will see this increasingly present around us.

This means we want God to grow our sensitivity and obedience where he can use us, perhaps to right a wrong, make someone safe, comfort or feed them. And not in a patronising, religiously dutiful or holier-than-thou kind of way, but with the generosity, love and joy we expect to receive from God as his kingdom comes, the sort where it’s obvious to everyone that there will be second helpings of pudding.