Building God's Kingdom
Our first reading presents a startling vision of what the kingdom of God will look like in it’s fulfillment:
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together,
with a little child to guide them.
It sounds quite fantastical, even absurd. How could such interactions ever take place? Can a wolf and a lamb become friends? Is a lion really going to eat hay? It seems to go against the very essence and nature of who these creatures are and what they are created to be.
For followers of Christ today, called to be co-creators in building this kingdom, such a vision of peace is profoundly challenging. Yet, if we look closely, we can see it taking shape in our midst. I glimpsed this myself during a visit to the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation in Back of the Yards where their restorative justice ministry brings together mothers who have lost children to violence who then go visit young people currently incarcerated for violent crimes. Yes, God’s kingdom of peace is being built in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center!
All of us, in some real and concrete way, are called to be ministers of peace. Let us discern together:
How can we bring peace into our hearts, into our families, into our community, into our world?
What is God calling you to do? What is God calling us to do?
By Matthew Burkhart
RCIA Sponsor
No comments:
Post a Comment