What is the Kingdom of God?

What is the Kingdom of God? This is not an easy question to answer. Once it was described in terms of somebody witnessing a downpour in a busy city on a crowded shopping day. The rain caught people off guard, and as people huddled together for shelter, it was noticed that young lads walked towards a boy in a wheelchair and helped his mother get him out of the rain. Another man held his jacket over his wife’s head as the icy rain soaked through his shirt and inched its way down his back. A girl stood from her sheltered and cherished doorway to offer the space to an elderly woman. A young mother wrapped her coat around her little children to shield and protect them.

It is so simple, but for the one observing, every act speaks of God’s Kingdom as being fully alive; it’s about putting the other first. The Kingdom of God is not a geographical location nor is it a walled garden. It’s not somewhere to be reached but a reality to be lived. It is not about a future address but living life in the now, living it fully and alive, living it freely and cheerfully, living it for others and with others so that God’s glory can reveal itself again and again, even in a winter’s cloudburst.

Vincent Sherlock, Let Advent be Advent