Your Kingdom come
Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven
The Problem with The World
In two short sentences, Jesus has diagnosed the basic problem with the world
and given the solution.
What’s wrong with the earth?
Why isn’t it heaven?
Because in heaven, God’s will is done and He is the undisputed king.
On earth even nature is fallen and we are the creatures who initiated the fall because of our rebellion in the garden.
No human infant needs to be taught how to say No, because it comes naturally.
Rebellion has become part of who we are.
But creation rebelling against the creator makes no sense.
Refusal to recognise Almighty God as the rightful ruler is the height of foolishness, but we still set ourselves up as little tin gods, in charge of our own destinies and futures.
Who will save us from ourselves?
Who can even see what the problem is?
We need someone with fresh eyes, who can see our world from a different perspective.
We need an outsider.
Seeing with Different Eyes
A more mundane example of this is driving in Turkey.
Bear with me - we will return to more important, cosmic issues.
In Britain we mostly drive according to The Highway Code. We use indicators, we park in safe places and we would never back into a main road. In Turkey drivers seem bemused as to why cars are fitted with indicators.
Cars stop randomly on blind corners and on the brow of the hill. They needlessly stop the flow of traffic when dropping someone off and I’ve often seen people back onto busy, main roads.
I wonder if Turks notice.
If they have never been abroad, they may think that this is just the way to drive and there isn’t any other way to do it.
I notice because I'm from Britain. I'm used to a different way of driving.
Eyes to See
Jesus was the man from heaven.
He knew a different type of existence, where God’s will is done, and there is harmony, love and peace. He was an outsider and so he had a different perspective or how the world could be ordered in a better way.
Jesus patiently explained about the Kingdom of Heaven to His disciples, but it was difficult for them to understand because they had never seen anything like heaven. The Kingdom of God or of Heaven was Jesus’ favourite topic.
It is too wide and important a subject to squeeze into one small blog!