Building a kingdom

Recently, I fell into a vat of uncertainty. My perspectives blurred, thoughts scrambled through a little ditty called vertigo. At 2 a.m. a week ago Wednesday, I lay awake with a painful stiff neck in the pink fairy princess bed with problems scrambling in my head like pool balls going towards different pockets. When buzz – a stinking mosquito flew into my ear. Can you believe it? I shot upward like Apollo 13 heading for the moon, when bam! The room started spinning out of control and I fell, like a deck of cards, backwards on my bed with instant nausea. Everyday normal activities were transformed into an ordeal as I navigated through rooms where walls appeared to be moving and floors unstable. Suddenly my life had changed.

Yesterday, I visited a friend who underwent major neck surgery. I expected to find him confined to bed and miserable. Instead, he answered the door and recounted how the Lord had blessed to the max the whole procedure. Although he was told he would be 24/7 in a neck brace for the next six weeks, there he stood perfectly normal as if expecting me for a BBQ. The whole church had prayed (the outcome could have been paralysis) and outside of minor discomfort, he looked and felt great! Praise God! As we discussed the many blessings that took place, he recounted how his walk ebbed and flowed and how he pulled closer to God because of this painful problem.

It’s terrifying when you face health problems. But if you face them knowing that you are loved as children of God, you don’t face them alone. Even in the worst-case scenarios, facing death, you aren’t going into the big abyss alone – no – you are transitioning into eternity. I read somewhere that we fear death because we are meant to be eternal. God created us to live forever.

1 Cor 15:51-57 tells us just that: “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Scripture also tells us as we close our eyes to the things of earth we open them to the presence of God. Back to the Garden we go!

So, the time to build our relationship with God and others is now – right now. We don’t want to be terrified on our deathbed hoping that God has a warm spot for us even though we know we aren’t perfect. This moment – not next week – is the time to get to know God through scripture, be connected to a body of believers, ask for forgiveness and serve him by making this earth a better place. Let’s make him proud like a Papa of what we are doing with our lives. Let’s build the Kingdom of God in our midst so others are being comforted by our concern and prayers. Then and only then they will know we are Christians by our love. And that’s another reason why faith matters!