Week 45—Tuesday Luke 8:1-3
Week 45—TUESDAY
“EVERYTHING ELSE HAS FAILED US,
SO WE ARE TRYING THIS”
Mahatma Gandhi, seeing the necessity of presenting to India some total conception, some program of total reconstruction, put forth rama rajya—the kingdom of Rama, the kingdom of a mythological figure. But it was so faint and colorless and contentless that it has faded out of the minds of India as an issue. I sat with a group of officers in the Pentagon at lunch. I asked them whether the religious spirit was growing in the armed forces, lessening, or as it was? A colonel replied, “Among the thoughtful it is growing.” I asked him, Why? He replied, “Well, we’ve tried everything else, and it has all let us down, so we are now trying this.” Everything, literally everything has failed us and now we are ripe, dead ripe, for God’s answer, the kingdom of God. Joseph said to Pharaoh, “God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer” (Gen. 41:16). Now we can say, “God will answer a disillusioned and floundering humanity and that answer is the Kingdom.”
What did Jesus mean by the kingdom of God? He said, “Pray then like this: Our Father . . . Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven’” (Matt. 6:9-10). The second phrase explains the first—the coming of the Kingdom was the doing of the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven. How is the will of God done in heaven? In the individual will? Yes. In the collective will? Yes. In the total social arrangements of heaven? Yes. It is a completely totalitarian order demanding a total obedience in the total life. Then may “Thy kingdom come . . . On earth as it is in heaven.” It is the coming of a completely totalitarian order demanding a total obedience in the total life. Wouldn’t that mean total bondage? Strangely enough, no. For this is a complete totalitarianism, which when you totally obey it you find total freedom. I do not argue, I testify: The more I belong to Christ and his kingdom, the more I belong to myself.
O Father, we thank you for this total bondage which becomes total freedom. Your will is our freedom. Our wills against your will is our bondage. This is the best proved fact of history. Save us from further hesitation. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: At last I have found my homeland—the land of my perfect freedom.