10TH NOVEMBER 2022
Reflection
The question that the Pharisees put to Jesus shows a preoccupation with the future coming of the kingdom of God. ‘When will the kingdom of God come?’ In response, Jesus directs their focus from the future to the present. The kingdom of God, the days of the Son of Man, may not have come in all its fullness and the timing of that future coming can never be calculated. Yet, the kingdom of God is to some extent already present, in and through the ministry of Jesus, ‘You must know’, Jesus says, ‘the kingdom of God is among you’.
Jesus would say the same to us today. The present is not all God would want it to be. That is why Jesus teaches us to pray in the prayer he gave us, ‘thy kingdom of God’. Yet, the seeds of God’s kingdom are already present among us. The rule of God is already working itself out in the lives of those who are seeking to live by the values of Jesus, who strive to walk in his way and to live by his truth. Those seeds are present in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. We need eyes to see the many signs of how God is working among us through his Son and the Spirit. Recognizing those seeds will give us confidence that the final harvest will come. In the words or Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we can be confident that God who has begun this good work among us will bring it to completion.
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