{"id":441,"date":"2013-11-14T10:31:39","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T15:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=441"},"modified":"2013-11-14T11:33:21","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T16:33:21","slug":"finding-the-kingdom-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=441","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Kingdom of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday of the 32nd<\/sup> Week in Ordinary Time<\/h2>\n

Wisdom7:22b \u2013 8:1; Luke 17: 20-25<\/h2>\n

Deacon Larry Brockman<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you ever had the experience of looking for something and not being able to find it?\u00a0 Frustrating, isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 Especially when you think you know where to look for it.\u00a0 But that, you see, might be the problem.\u00a0 We all have expectations of where to find a missing article, and those expectations can cloud our minds; they blind us to the reality and so, we can miss what we are looking for even when it is right under our noses.<\/p>\n

The Pharisees were like that.\u00a0 They were looking for the Kingdom of God in earthly terms.\u00a0 They were hoping and waiting for the return of the mighty earthly Kingdom like the one that Kings David and Solomon presided over.\u00a0 They were not looking for the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached, a heavenly Kingdom, one where the joy and happiness are inside the person, rather than a result of worldly affluence.\u00a0 What kind of a Kingdom of God are you looking for?<\/p>\n

Now in the first reading we have a very poetic and beautiful description that tells us what it is like when a person is filled with the Wisdom of God.\u00a0 The wisdom of God, we are told, \u201c\u2026Is a spirit: intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, agile, clear, unstained, certain, never harmful, loving the good, keen, unhampered, beneficent, kindly, firm, secure, tranquil, all-powerful, all-seeing, and pervading all spirits, though they be intelligent, pure and very subtle.\u201d\u00a0 Wow!<\/p>\n

Can you just close your mind for a moment to everything else, and just think about what it would be like if you were filled with such a spirit?\u00a0 Just imagine being filled with a spirit possessing all those qualities at the same time.\u00a0 Because that is what it would be like to be filled with the Spirit of God.\u00a0 And if we were so filled with such a spirit, we would have arrived; we would have somehow achieved a harmony between ourselves and God.\u00a0 So we would be experiencing the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

But I suspect that this is not what most of are looking for, and it is not what we are thinking about when we think of the Kingdom of God, because we are looking elsewhere.\u00a0 Most of us are looking for our dream of eternal happiness, a dream which is unfortunately clouded by some ignorance, limited sight, harmful inclinations, and self-centeredness.\u00a0 To achieve the wisdom of God, we would have to defer to the Spirit of God, by purging ourselves of all that interferes with such perfection, and this is very difficult to do.\u00a0 And so, we can miss the real Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

In the Gospel, Jesus talks about the Son of man \u201cin his day\u201d.\u00a0 He says, \u201cJust like the Lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in His day.\u201d\u00a0 So, how can you look for such a thing?\u00a0 The answer is that you can\u2019t look for it in a conventional sense.\u00a0 You can\u2019t say to yourself: \u201cI want to see Lightning right now\u201d, and go outside and scan the sky looking for it and expect to find it; rather, you have to be open to it all the time in a predisposition toward the spontaneous without being in control of exactly when and where you see it.\u00a0 It\u2019s making a conscious effort to always be on the lookout for the right thing and the right thing is to follow the urgings of that right spirit whose qualities we just listed a moment ago.<\/p>\n

When you do that, let go and just be open to the urgings of the spirit then, you will find the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time Wisdom7:22b \u2013 8:1; Luke 17: 20-25 Deacon Larry Brockman   Have you ever had the experience of looking for something and not being able to find it?\u00a0 Frustrating, isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 Especially when you think you know where to look for it.\u00a0 But that, you see, might be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[253],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}