FreedomExemplo

Enduring Kingdom

Growing up, I remember passing by an old brown cloth-clad book sitting in my parents’ house. Aside from the gold embossed letters that caught my eye, I didn’t pay it much attention. Fast-forward to the year of the pandemic. Once again, I found myself in my childhood home, passing by that book. This time, taking considerable interest in the words my four times great-grandmother wrote long ago. She was a Quaker from Ohio, born 200 years ago. After she passed, her diary entries and letters were compiled into a memoir that was published in the late 1800s.

Her words were saturated with trust and love for her God—our same God. They stirred my heart. I’ve felt defeated lately. Maybe it was the pandemic. Perhaps it was simply life with children or life in this new time. To be honest, whatever the reason, I had felt overwhelmed with life and underwhelmed by God.

And then I think, Why am I disenchanted with a God who has given me so much? He’s loved me when I’ve been most unlovable, He’s comforted me when I ached with despair, He’s provided when it hasn’t made sense, and He’s shown Himself when I wasn’t even looking for Him. We worship what we most think about, and I haven’t been worshipping God with my thoughts or my time. I’ve given away that which is fleeting to worry, complaining, or scrolling.

As a believer, the antidote to defeat is worship. Worship stems from gratefulness, and gratefulness happens only after we remember what God has done, is doing, and will do. He promised us a new world–a kingdom untouched by sin, pain, brokenness, jealously, bitterness, or sickness. A kingdom that is unshakable. Let’s be overwhelmed by the power of that truth.

As my grandmother said, even then in 1857, “Truly, there is much in these days of tossing and trial to cast down and discourage; but oh, what a comfort that there is the same sure Refuge unto which to flee, the same unerring Guide, the same unfailing Friend . . .”

Father, thank You for being the same God across the ages. Thank You for not leaving me to while away my days in despair of the unknown, but for giving me the hope of Your unshakable kingdom to come.

For Further Reading: Daniel 2:44; Hebrews 13:15; Revelation 21