Once upon a time, in a kingdom far far away …
So starts a typical fairy tale, in a typical fairy tale way. It’s predictable beginning leads into the duress of a princess, and the lengths that the prince will go to save her, and to save the kingdom from a dark and evil force. The ending is always the same … and they all lived happily ever after.
Now THAT sounds like my kind of kingdom … well, except for the dark and evil force bit.
Life, real life, is not like a fairly tale. In our real lives we are not all princes and princesses. In real life we are the common folk of the kingdom. We do the work, through blood, sweat and tears, so that the royal family might live, not as they deserve, but as part of their blessing from being in the right bloodline.
Over the past year I have been learning about the kingdom.
It all started with a simple question, one that all in that kingdom (society) at that time would have been able to answer. This question came from ones who knew the answer, but … they asked anyway … maybe they thought that his sovereign had a different perspective from the rest in the kingdom?
The question was, “who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom (of heaven)?”
Any of us who grew up on fairy tales could answer that one! Why the king of the kingdom is of course the greatest.
This man with royal blood flowing through his human veins flipped the kingdom on it’s royal backside. He brings a child into the middle of this group of royal watchers. In this kingdom, a child was … JUST a child (kind of like, for my hubby, the beast is JUST a dog). A child, in the time of this tale, would have no rights, no possessions … a child WAS a possession.
So, this robe wearing man said:
“I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.”
I am thinking that those kingdom quizzers were wishing that they had just stuck to simple questions at this point. Or maybe, they thought that they had asked a simple question?
Their royal leader had just turned their kingdom (societal) norms on their backsides! How could a grown man (woman) return to childhood? Who would want to? But, if they did not, they would be stuck on the outskirts of the kingdom, with the drawbridge forever pulled up.
This royal leader, Jesus, turned the kingdom, the world, up-side-down with his redevelopment plan of the kingdom. The blueprints he was drawing were nothing like the originals … he had gone back to square one.
And that is what He, the king who sits on the throne, asks of us … to allow ourselves to be re-created, re-fashioned, re-born into a new creation. He has fought the dark and evil forces that have lulled us into a lifetime of dreamless sleep. Now, we are invited to be awakened by the kiss of the king, into a life as heirs of the kingdom.
We become the princes and princesses of the fairy tale. And, after a lifetime of loving, and working, and struggling, and stress, and pressures, and heartaches … we will eventually live,
happily ever after.
itsawonderfilledlife 