F. Buechner, ““If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, … we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know…The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”
Jesus spends a great deal of time focusing on this concept of the Kingdom of Heaven (also known as the Kingdom of God). The Kingdom of Heaven is both in the present and yet to come. It is active all around us, yet not fully known or understood. As Buechner put it, we all are homesick for the Kingdom of Heaven. Even though we may not realize it we all crave to be fully immersed in this Kingdom that our God reigns in.
Both Christians and Non-Christians alike were made to live our lives in close proximity to God. It’s easy to get tripped up on daily struggles and the aching pains of this world, but our focus needs to be on what is to come. Romans 8:18 says, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
Life will continue to be difficult and at times hardly bearable, but we have a hope for the future that is beyond anything we can imagine or hope for. A place where our “best dreams and truest prayers” will be experienced fully, but far greater than that we will be passionately and unimaginably aware of the goodness and presence of our God.
We must remind ourselves daily that we are foreigners on this earth and we will soon be in a far greater place than we could ever wish or think up. This is why we push forward. This is our hope: to be intimately acquainted with the King of the Universe and to finally be rid of all sin and to live an overwhelmingly abundant life with Him and those who have also chosen to believe in and commit their lives to the Lord.
