Disparity of Kingdoms

Ever feel like you are breaking rules you don't even know about?  The dirty look from a passing driver, the awkward moment at a business meeting, the subtle once-over at a party where you seem to come up short?

As much as the middle school cafeteria is far behind us, its adult counterpart is alive and well.

Worse, we do it too.  There are people I mentally dismiss as uninteresting or too-Baptist or irrelevant to whatever it is I'm into at the moment.

The thing is that there are rules to the kingdom we are building.  Hierarchies, court dress, manners and observances. Societies have rules, and we learn them or we are thrown outside it's massive gates.

The weird thing is that it creates these sort of fake versions of ourselves. We learn to say things we normally wouldn't think to say, buy things we might not normally buy and go each week to have acrylic superglued to the tips of our fingers.

I love it that when Jesus talks about kingdoms He says things like: "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."  Little kids are accepting.  They notice differences, but rarely reject because of it.  They don't buy, dress or say things to make themselves be something they aren't so you will like them.  (They will however wear a towel, blanket or any other makeshift cape because they saw a show once where that guy could fly.)

The kingdom of heaven is way different than the one we live in now.  And my hope is that bit by bit...like yeast working its way through bread...that kingdom is taking over.