The kingdom of God is like....

On Sunday afternoon, I had the delightful opportunity to have lunch with part of our church’s Confirmation class, along with some other adults (it still surprises me to be on the adult side of these conversations, incidentally). We talked about our faith and told stories about how God had moved in our lives, and there was such a range of stories. I represented the “willing to admit to getting really mad at/about God a lot” contingent, but others had stories of getting distracted from God and being led back, or hearing clear words from God in crisis, or simply feeling God’s presence throughout a long life of quiet, perhaps boring, faithfulness.  

Then Monday, my pastor and I took an adventure to the north side of Chicago to deliver a minivan full of winter coats and other wintery accessories to RefugeeOne, an organization that assists refugees who have been resettled in the Chicago area.

So back in September, shortly after pictures of little Aylan Kurdi started circulating online, I knew I needed to do something. And RefugeeOne came up through a link someone shared on Facebook. They were holding a coat drive for refugees who had been resettled in the Chicago area but had previously come from warm climates and had no winter gear. I figured I had some things I could bring, but their office was about an hour away and I didn’t have enough stuff to make the drive worth my while. So I asked on Facebook if anyone had anything else I could bring, and my pastor suggested I get the church involved.

At that point, basically all I did was say the same thing I did on Facebook—I asked people, “Hey, do you have any coats? Because these people could really use some coats,” and coats poured in for weeks. They filled the Sunday School director’s office and overflowed the big cardboard boxes that the Sunday School students had decorated to collect donations. Sunday morning at the end of Sunday School the kids hauled them down from the office where they were stored and piled them over the altar rail up front, and during the service we blessed them and the people who would be wearing them.

So the next day, it was wonderful to visit RefugeeOne’s offices and hear about the many ways that they work with refugees, from the moment they get off the plane until they become citizens. They find and furnish apartments for them, stock the pantry, then help them get jobs and learn English—for those who have lived in refugee camps for many years, sometimes even showing them how to use the door key for that new apartment! RefugeeOne’s hallways were lined with gorgeous artwork done by refugee artists and photographs of their clients at different stages in their journey here.[1]

My pastor asked the woman who gave us the tour, whose job is to escort their clients through the permanent residency/citizenship paperwork maze, how she felt about her job—was she hopeful? Discouraged?

She responded that she loved it—she was never discouraged. Her work held so much beauty and significance for her, as the child of refugees herself, and she loved helping people come here and thrive.

Afterwards we—my pastor and I—had a long talk over fabulous Ethiopian food about what we had seen and what had inspired us about this visit.

Honestly, I was both inspired and a little jealous of the meaningful work RefugeeOne does, showing God’s love to others and blessing their lives in such concrete, tangible ways! And fearlessly crossing those boundaries of culture, religion, and language that typically segregate us from each other—it was a beautiful image of God’s kingdom.

My place in my church and community are so safe and easy by comparison—I know that God doesn’t call the citizens of the kingdom to stay safe and comfortable. That’s not how the kingdom grows. What if I’m not fulfilling that call because I’m Here where it’s safe and boring and I write long blog posts agonizing over whether my work means anything instead of being There where it’s risky and gorgeous and I could actually help people?

But those coats.

Then he said, “How can I picture God’s kingdom for you? What kind of story can I use? It’s like a pine nut that a man plants in his front yard. It grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches, and eagles build nests in it.”

He tried again. “How can I picture God’s kingdom? It’s like yeast that a woman works into enough dough for three loaves of bread—and waits while the dough rises.”[2]

I only contributed about a pine nut’s worth to that coat drive. And then there were over fifty coats, plus boots and hats and gloves and scarves and snowpants. God’s kingdom was sprouting leaves and tendrils in closets and garages and under-the-bed totes in homes all over Lemont.

And the kingdom of God was there in the holy conversation[3] at lunch on Sunday where people who had walked with God much longer than me reminded me that sometimes a life of faith is slow and quiet, and again at lunch over Ethiopian food on Monday, where we digested the new-to-us work of God we had just seen. It’s like my sourdough starter, which takes way longer than the instant yeast in the jar in my fridge. To make bread I have to dip out some starter, feed it flour and water and let it set overnight until it’s bubbling and oozing and the happy little yeasties and sour lactobacillus have worked their way into the whole mess, and then I knead in even more flour, and salt and sugar, and let it set even longer while it swells again before I can bake it. It’s messy and slow and domestic, but that’s the image Jesus gives for the kingdom.

The starter's name is the Burblicious Burbletron.

This doesn’t change the sense that perhaps things are too safe here, though. Gardening and sourdough may be slow and boring but they’re still messy—you get dirt under your fingernails and dough crusted on the countertops, and sometimes things don’t grow and you have to clean up and start over. If that’s the case, how do I make my work here more dangerous?

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep 

your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

We walked out the door of the church carrying armloads of coats—maybe we’re already on the road to something dangerous and beautiful and holy, if we can let ourselves be swept off.

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[1] If you’re in the Chicago area, you should really check them out! http://www.refugeeone.org/

[2] Luke 13:18-21 (The Message)

[3] I found the lovely phrase “holy conversation” in The Holy Twins, a beautiful life of Benedict and Scholastica written for children by Kathleen Norris and illustrated by Tomie DePaola. I highly recommend it. Incidentally, it also shows how two siblings can live lives of equal holiness and faithfulness even in very different settings—Scholastica quietly gardening and praying and teaching in her nunnery and Benedict wandering around living in caves and being nearly assassinated all the time because he kept telling people what to do.