Thy Kingdom Come

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
—Luke 4:18-19

There are whispers going through the Nazareth synagogue today. Joseph’s son has returned to His hometown and stands for a Sabbath reading. He’s handed the scroll of Isaiah and finds just the passage He wanted. There’s a confidence in His voice as He reads the prophet’s words. He returns to His seat and with every eye fixed on Him announces that He, Jesus, son of the local carpenter, is the fulfillment of this centuries-old promise. And what begins with neighbors marveling at His teaching will end in an angry mob trying to run Him off a cliff.

Sometimes kingdom rescue doesn’t come the way we think it should.

While some were awaiting a Messiah who would overthrow governments, Jesus chose personal encounters over an earthly throne. He could turn down the counterfeit authority offered to Him in the wilderness because He knew that, with a few small words, He could send Satan’s soldiers fleeing. His was an eternal authority, cloaked in an all-powerful love. And though His full reign was yet to come, He would spend His present time on earth leaving signposts for that future, total restoration.

Luke 4 gives us a preview of the Isaiah promise fulfilled. From a demon possessed man to a feverish mother-in-law to all the town’s sick coming for an evening healing, not a single person got away before looking into the eyes of Jesus and feeling His powerful touch. He didn’t rush off. No one was more aware of how limited His time on earth was. The clock was ticking, but each hurting person in front of Him mattered. Moments of healing weren’t an obstacle on His path to the cross, they were whispers of a better kingdom coming. Like a father examining his child’s wound, the Son of God now had the opportunity to physically touch the scars of His sons and daughters and make them whole.

With each miracle, Jesus was finding fractures left from the Fall, and returning them to their proper order.

As His disciples, our calling is the same. We are to bind up the wounds of those broken and bruised by a fallen world. We are to look at physical and spiritual suffering not only as something that will be restored in the future, but as something we can help restore right now. People matter to us because they mattered to Jesus. So, we feed the hungry. We tend to the sick. We pray over the spiritually oppressed. We fight for those crushed under the heavy hand of injustice. We look into the faces of the hurting and say, “It does not have to be so.”

When we do this, we scatter seeds into the cracks of a broken earth, hoping for shoots and leaves of a future kingdom to break through.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. It’s time we put hands and feet to that prayer.