Look in a mirror. You are looking at a person in whom God is present, right here, right now. God is within you. God is within the entire universe--within our family members and neighbors, within our government, corporate, business, professional, educational, scientific and artistic leaders. God is within mountains, air, trees, plants and flowers, animals, and even within the computer you are now using.
God is within Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism,and all other religions. God is within President Obama, our Congress and Supreme Court, within the rich and the poor, the sick and outcast, within Pope Francis, Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, and Vladimir Putin and the Ukrainians, within all the displaced refugees and immigrants all over the world. Yes, God is also within ISIS and all terrorists.
No person, no society, no institution is outside of God, and none ever becomes so opaque that it loses the ability to commune with the indwelling God and even express God's peace and love in themselves and their everyday activities. No individual, no group, cannot be an expression of the global Christ. Such a view is the glory and foolishness of our faith. As St. Paul says, "Now the natural person [the spiritually immature or degraded person] does not accept what pertains to the Spirit, for to him it is foolishness." (1 Cor.2:14).
For us who have eyes to see, as we look in the mirror we can go deep within ourselves and take a "God's Eye" view of ourselves and the world. We can look around and see the Kingdom of God, for whose coming Jesus taught us to pray, "Thy Kingdom come...on earth as it is in heaven." God's Kingdom or reign, is our everyday world seen as a world of divinely luminous, ever-evolving creativity, justice, peace, joy, gratitude and love. This world exists within our world--within ourselves and every community, within every government, corporation and business, school, religion, science, art and nation.
We can also see that while the kingdom/reign of God is present throughout the world, it does not fully permeate the world. In fact, it will never be fully realized here on our space/time earth. Our space/time shadow side will always be with us until Christ returns and turns our space/time earth into eternal heaven. Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to a wheat field, planted by Christ himself, in which the enemy has sown weeds. And the weeds will grow along with the wheat until the harvest, i.e., until Christ returns. (Mt. 13:24-30, 36-43). Sadly, horribly, some of the "weeds" will fall so far into darkness and violence--something we, with "God's eyes" should try to foresee and prevent--that they can be stopped only with violence.
Despite the resistance that is present to God's Kingdom, we live and act in the Spirit of Hope. With our "God's Eye" view of the world we can discern and are called and empowered to do whatever we can--alone or in community--with whatever influence we have, to move our space/time world forward in ever evolving self-transcendence toward the fulfillment of the Eternal Kingdom that is to come. Along the way, with God's eternal love and with Christ's space/time, sacrificial/Pentecost love, we never give up--not even on those farthest from the Kingdom of God here on earth.
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