This post has been brewing in my head for a while...keeps changing in form, title, words...But, I think I have it now. [If it's a little bit choppy and all over the place, I apologize. There's just too much going on in my head...]

It started with this book I'm reading. It's called "This Beautiful Mess - Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God" by Rick McKinley. While I don't know if I agree or even understand everything he writes about, I am still being moved by this book. It's super thought provoking; I believe I can even use the word "radical." The back cover of the book says this:

When Jesus announced, “the kingdom of God is at hand,” what did He mean? Uncover the reality of the kingdom of God and what it might look like if followers of Christ practiced its in-breaking presence. What happens when we view life through the lens of the kingdom? How does the beauty of Jesus’ reign break into the mess of our broken lives and world? What if we lived as though a world other than this one was here today? This Beautiful Mess launches a paradigm-shifting journey inviting us to experience the kingdom of God in the ordinary miracle of our everyday lives.

I guess that would describe the book. But not what it's been doing in my head. It's only a brief window into how the view before my eyes is changing.

I'm a girl all about definitions. I love words and looking up what words mean. Definitions are super important because knowing them makes the words more powerful. But how do you define the Kingdom of God? At this point, I'm pretty sure you can't. How can you define something so large, multi-faceted and all-encompassing? I think that's why if you look in the New Testament, Jesus used numerous metophors for the Kingdom. It was likened to things such as a treasure in a field, a pearl, yeast, a mustard seed. Yeast and pearls are very much different things. How does that work?

At one point, the author explains that Kingdom of God is here already, but also, not here yet. It's a tension that exists between the two. Jesus did show up, and He brought with Him life, redemption, relationship and beauty. But when you look around you, at the ugliness that is, the death, disease, deception, greed, and confusion how can we say the Kingdom of God is here? The author put it this way:

The Kingdom of God is the kingdom of life, health, beauty, salvation and freedem to name just a few of its qualities. The enemy of the kingdom, whom the Bible refers to as Satan, is always attacking that life and health and beauty. He attacks spiritual freedom; he wants us to be paralyzed. His relentless attacks are why things are not the way they are supposed to be...yet.

But there in the midst of the tension, the kingdom of God still comes crashing in.

Since reading that paragraph, I've been looking for the Kingdom of God in my life. Here are just two of the things I recently witnessed:

The Kingdom of God was present this past Saturday, as I watched my little baby having the time of her life with her daddy, splashing in the cool lake on a hot day. Life, family, laughter - these are the things of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God came crashing in during our church service, when two brave women got up and shared the ugliest, most beautiful testimony I have ever heard. Redemption, forgiveness, wholeness - these are the things of the Kingdom.

The author also says this about Kingdom-living:

Pay attention, Jesus was saying, because in a mysterious but powerful way, the condition of your heart radically dictates what the kingdom is going to look like in your life. If you wrap all your hopes and dreams around it and let it sink far into your inner being, the kingdom of Jesus will live in you and bear fruit.

So where does that leave me? The Kingdom is still "undefined". How can I make sure it's present in my life if I can't even explain what it is? I think...I think that's okay. I need to be all right with an undefined presence of God in my life. If I could put it in a box with a nice ribbon, it wouldn't be all powerful. It wouldn't be God and His Kingdom.

That leaves me with this conclusion: I want kingdom fruit, whatever that looks like, to be present in my life. I want to look for the Kingdom in my everyday life and be encouraged that though it's not here yet, it's powerful enough for little pieces to break through. I will cherish and be grateful for those moments when the Kingdom does break through and I will strive to make choices that will enable it to show up more and more. I want my heart to reflect Jesus and everything He is.