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Dear Siblings in Christ,
What if God's kingdom is already at work in ways we cannot yet see?
That question sits underneath all three of our readings this week, and I want to spend our time together tracing how each one answers it.
In First Kings, Solomon is newly on the throne when God comes to him in a dream and says, ask for whatever you want. He doesn't ask for wealth, long life, or victory over his enemies. He asks for a listening heart — the wisdom to tell right from wrong as he leads God's people. It's a striking prayer, mostly because of what it admits: Solomon doesn't yet have what he needs, and he trusts that God is already willing to give it. He's asking to catch up to a wisdom not yet visible to him. God's kingdom is already at work in him — he just has to ask for the eyes to see it and the heart to use it.
Then in Matthew's gospel, Jesus opens his hand and answers the question even more directly. A mustard seed too small to notice becomes a tree big enough to shelter birds. Yeast disappears into the dough and quietly leavens the whole loaf. A treasure turns up hidden in a field, already there long before anyone finds it. None of this happens quickly, and none of it happens where anyone is watching closely. Jesus is telling us, in image after image, that the kingdom of God is already active — growing, working, waiting to be found — long before we notice it. The question isn't whether God's kingdom is at work among us. It's whether we have eyes to notice it when it breaks the surface.
Paul, writing to the churches in Rome, takes the same truth and turns it inward. He says plainly that we don't always know how to pray as we ought. If you've ever sat with grief, or a hard decision, or a burden you couldn't put into words, you know exactly what he means. But Paul says that in that very moment — when you have nothing to offer — the Spirit is already praying within you, with groans too deep for language. God's kingdom is at work in the place you'd least expect to find it: your own wordless, unfinished prayers. And Paul closes with the promise that holds it all together — nothing in all creation, not even our own not-knowing, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
So, what if it's true?
What if God's kingdom really is already at work among us — in a conversation we didn't think mattered, in a prayer we couldn't finish, in a small and unglamorous act of care that looks like nothing much at all? Solomon didn't wait to see the wisdom before he asked for it. The mustard seed doesn't announce itself before it grows. The Spirit doesn't wait for us to find the words before it prays on our behalf.
I believe God's kingdom is already at work among us at Emmanuel, in ways we cannot yet fully see. My prayer for us this week is not that we would manufacture that work ourselves, but that we would have the patience to trust it and the wisdom to notice it when it does.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Will
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