This is the way of the kingdom . . .

I hear a whisper in a variety of voices over the course of many days—all with a similar message. And while there is a season for “big picture” thinking, so too is there a time to dial it in and focus on what’s right there in front of me.

I think of times when I’ve been in a plane and flown over prairie and been delighted by the patchwork squares of farmland I see below. For me it’s a visual (aside from the pure satisfaction of being near prairie) of the wisdom of tending the figurative plot I’ve been allotted and making a difference in the world in the manner and place I was created for.

A brief, and socially distanced, conversation with a friend who has come to our door with a gift, tears falling from my eyes as I read words she has written on a handmade card and hold her offering in grateful hands, and I am so blessed by her thoughtfulness.

This is the way of the kingdom . . . 

I read these words every morning in Robert Benson’s Venite: A Book of Daily Prayer and they come to me now. This short conversation. This handmade gift. This willingness to bless someone who needs it more than the giver can know. This. This is the way of the kingdom.

As is tending my metaphorical hectare, and caring for those who abide there and those who are just passing through. Less concern over the things I have little or no influence over, and more for the things—and people—I do. Less outrage. More love. Less self-righteous indignation. More love. This is the way of the kingdom.

And that whisper reminds me of truth I so easily and often forget. El Roi. The God who sees me. In my anxiety and depression and feeling so—I don’t even know what—for so much of this year I am seen and loved and granted such rich grace.

Someone, in caring for her own hectare, listened to a whisper and enriched a piece of mine. I will, in turn, cultivate a section of another. And so on. And so on.

This is the way of the kingdom . . .