June 8 2022
THE LEAST IN THE KINGDOM……
Schrijven betekent: jezelf lezen. (To write means: reading your own life-story). Max Frisch..
How true.
Here’s my daily routine. I always get up at 7.30. Make tea, 3 cups of a mixture of Red Tea, Green Tea, Peppermint and Gingerroot. At 10 I have 2 cups of coffee. Why that much liquid? Twice I had kidney stones: not recommended.
I then read aloud a portion of the Psalms, doggedly going through the 150 separate poems year after year, then ask the Lord for a blessing on the meal and on the day.
After my standard breakfast of oatmeal porridge – made the night before in a slow cooker – spiked with a bit of ground-up flaxseed, blueberries, fruit in season and baptized with homegrown applesauce, plus an egg (I also take vitamin C, D and minerals), I sit down and write 500 words on a text of the daily lectionary. I first read the prescribed Bible passages and then select a part that appeals to me. That takes me about one hour.
For me “Life is discipline”.
Proverbs always connects wisdom with discipline. My morning routine has not changed since my wife of 67 years died, now almost 2 years ago. Actually, my life has become more regimented, now that I am alone.
I then read 3 daily newspapers on my computer, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The New York Times, and the British Guardian. This provides me with a somewhat balanced overview of what goes on in the world.
At 11 o’clock, I start preparing my hot meal, always vegetarian, and mostly homegrown. In the afternoon, after a nap, I walk for an hour, often on the nearby Canada Trail. A very light supper: yoghurt and a slice of bread, and in bed by 10 pm.
One of my five children, three in Ontario – 250-350 km away – two in the US, visits every week, my oldest daughter every other week, who also phones daily. Yes, I am a fortunate father. Lesson: treat your children well: you will need them someday.
Life is change.
When I was a youngster, I wanted to become a missionary. My parents, devout Christians, encouraged that aim, and sent me, far too young, to the prep school for ministers, with emphasis on Greek, Hebrew and Latin, the languages in which the Scriptures were written. By the grace of God, I did not turn out that way, but being keen on matters religious remained with me all my life.
Yet here I am: a missionary, of sorts, with readers world-wide: primarily the USA, Canada, China, but from all over. As an ardent promotor of the New Creation (I wrote a book about it), I see my long life, as preparatory for eternity.
I’ve often had trouble with the church, but I always remained a member. The church, any church with officers, hierarchy, confessions, is like John the Baptizer, who was the Billy Graham of his day: fiery, flamboyant, and yet… Jesus said of him, “The least in the Kingdom is greater than he.” (Matthew 11:11).
I now see why. Both the church and the John who baptized people, were and are KINGDOM ignorant, saw heaven as the goal, creation as disposable, yet it is our future: the Kingdom to come!
That’s why the views my parents had on eternity are no longer mine. Their ‘heaven and hell’ belief has been replaced with totally different concepts. “By the Sea of Crystal saints in glory stand”, however beautiful the melody, white robes and choirs don’t reflect the LIFE Jesus taught us. To me today’s church is so Old Testament, so un-kingdom. I now completely endorse Bonhoeffer’s view that God and creation are one, that sin against creation is a sin against God. The renewed earth, populated by ‘the redeemed of the Lord’ – Isaiah 35 – is the kingdom we have to seek and promote.
Life is looking ahead.
“Imagining good things ahead of us makes us feel better in the current moment,” said Simon A. Rego, the chief psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who has written extensively on the effect of anticipation on mood. “It can increase motivation, optimism and patience and decrease irritability.”
My hope, the dawning of the new creation, makes me optimistic about the future, makes me look forward to the immensity of newness, a world so perfect, a world so enticing, a world so beautiful, a world so engaging that we need eternity to explore it, eternity to beautify it, eternity to embrace it, eternity to know ourselves.
Even the least in the kingdom, God’s new creation, is greater than any Pope, is greater than any archbishop or cardinal, is greater even than John the Baptizer.