Learning to be Pilgrims Again

Rightly so, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I hold on to the promise of God’s Kingdom. In nothing else was the sacrifice so great. In nothing else do we have a guaranteed outcome. We win. Still there is much discussion around the importance of God’s Kingdom and how it should be for us as sojourners in this world. As you can see, my tendency is to explain things with a cliché like “we win.” In his excellent book Onward, Russell Moore describes this much better than I can. We are pilgrims:

We can learn to be pilgrims again, uneasy in American culture, as we should have been all along. But we are not pilgrims cringing in protective silos, waiting for the sound of trumpeters in the sky. We are part of a kingdom, a kingdom we see from afar and a kingdom we see assembling itself all around us in miniature, these little outposts of the future called the church. By putting kingdom first, we can speak from consciences formed by the future to know how to recognize what matters, peace, justice, righteousness, and how to recognize who matters, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the poor, the captive, the powerless. As we do remember, like our Lord, where we came from, and where we’re going. And as we do, we render to Caesar what we ought. We pledge allegiance where we can. But we never forget how to call Jesus “Jesus.”

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Pray this week:

Father, help me to focus on your kingdom and show me how I can serve you.

Look at Hebrews 11:13, 12:1,2

—Mike