God's Kingdom is like a woman who waits
Perhaps you've heard sermons about this parable:
"God's kingdom is like yeast that a woman works into the dough for dozens of loaves of barley bread—and waits while the dough rises..."*
explaining that the Kingdom of God starts small but rises to fill the entire earth. It's almost used nationalistically; God's big-take-over-plan to rule the world and make everyone Christian is like what yeast does to bread.
That's not what it means.
Cynthia Bourgeault said:
"[The Kingdom of God is] not later, but lighter - some more subtle quality or dimension of experience accessible to you right in the moment. You don't die into it; you awaken into it… the Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness; it is not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place.”
The Kingdom of Heaven ruins everything: our biases and ideas of superiority and safety; our perception of others and carefully constructed belief systems; our walls and fences and coping mechanisms; our propensity to hide and numb, project and perform.
Jesus didn’t say that God's Kingdom is like an army, or a warrior, or a king, that takes over and conquers and wins its dominion by force.
God's Kingdom is like a woman, a mother, a sister, a daughter, the feminine nature at work in the world…
God's Kingdom is like yeast activated with warm water and flour, putrifying, fermenting, eating matter, changing its composition and shape and outcome.
God's Kingdom is like a woman who waits, and watches, giving yeast time to do its best work; time to rise into its new form, until it becomes bublling, soft, nourishing flesh.
Do you know what the Kingdom of God is like? It's like rising from something you never thought you could into someone and something you never dreamed you could.
From this week’s series "The Kingdom of Heaven Ruid Everything", this week, with a subscription, in the App.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
