{"id":23495,"date":"2024-03-10T13:09:47","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T17:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23495"},"modified":"2024-03-11T09:21:06","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T13:21:06","slug":"23495","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23495","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Peace (Official Lyric Video) - Bethel Music feat. We The Kingdom | Peace\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uW6xcmqfiY4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Really Real<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard Rohr invites us to enter the Reign of God\u2014what he describes as the \u201cReally Real\u201d\u2014even though we face many difficult \u201crealities\u201d in our lives.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus announced, lived, and inaugurated for history a new social order. He called it the&nbsp;<em>Reign&nbsp;<\/em>or&nbsp;<em>Kingdom of God,<\/em>&nbsp;and it became <strong>the guiding image of his entire ministry. The Reign of God is the subject of Jesus\u2019 inaugural address (Mark 1:15; Matthew 4:17; Luke 4:16\u201321), his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5\u20137), and most of his parables.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once this guiding vision of God\u2019s will became clear to Jesus after his baptism and time alone in the desert, everything else came into perspective. In fact, Matthew\u2019s Gospel says Jesus began to preach \u201cfrom then onward\u201d (4:17). <strong>He had his absolute reference point that allowed him to judge and evaluate everything else properly<\/strong>. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What we discover in the New Testament, especially in Matthew\u2019s Gospel, is that the <strong>Reign of God is a new world order, a new age, a promised hope begun in the teaching and ministry of Jesus\u2014and continued in us<\/strong>. I think of the Reign of God as the&nbsp;<strong><em>Really Real<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That experience of the Really Real\u2014the \u201cKingdom\u201d experience\u2014is the heart of Jesus\u2019 teaching. It\u2019s Reality with a capital R, the very bottom line, the pattern-that-connects. It\u2019s the goal of all true religion, the experience of the Absolute, the Eternal, what is. [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In order to explain this concept, it may be <strong>helpful to say what it\u2019s not: the \u201cKingdom\u201d is not the same as heaven.<\/strong> Many Christians have mistakenly thought that the Reign of God is \u201ceternal life,\u201d or where we go after we die. That idea is<strong> disproven by Jesus\u2019 own prayer: \u201cThy Kingdom come, thy will be done,&nbsp;<em>on earth&nbsp;<\/em>as in heaven<\/strong>\u201d (Matthew 6:10). As always, Jesus joins earth and heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThy Kingdom come\u201d means very clearly that God\u2019s realm is something that enters into this world, or, as Jesus often says, \u201cis close at hand.\u201d We shouldn\u2019t project it into another world. It\u2019s a reality that breaks into this world now and then, when people are like God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>God gives us just enough tastes of God\u2019s realm to believe in it and to want it more than anything.<\/strong> In his parables, Jesus never says the Kingdom is totally now or totally later. <strong>It\u2019s always now-and-not-yet. We only have the first fruits of the Kingdom in this world, but we experience enough to know it\u2019s the only thing that will ever satisfy us.<\/strong> Once we have had the truth, half-truths can\u2019t satisfy us anymore. In its light, everything else is relative, even our own life. When we<strong> experience the Kingdom or love of God, it becomes ultimate and real truth for us.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we live inside the Really Real, we live in a \u201cthreshold space\u201d between this world and the next. We <strong>learn how to live between heaven and earth, one foot in both, holding them precious together.<\/strong> [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Our Limited Perspectives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>For Father Richard, contemplation begins as we realize the limits of our own perspective. Reality is far vaster than we can perceive.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every viewpoint is a view from a point. <strong>Unless we recognize and admit our own personal and cultural viewpoints, we will never know how to decentralize our own perspective. We will live with a high degree of illusion that brings much suffering into the world.<\/strong> I think this is what Simone Weil meant by stating, \u201cThe love of God is the unique source of all certainties.\u201d [1] Only an outer and positive reference point utterly grounds the mind and heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the keys to wisdom is that we must recognize our own biases, our own addictive preoccupations, and those things to which, for some reason, we refuse to pay attention.<strong> Until we see these patterns (which is early-stage contemplation), we will never be able to\u00a0<em>see what we do not see<\/em>. <\/strong>Without such critical awareness of the small self, there is little chance that any individual will produce truly great knowing or enduring wisdom. [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only people who have done their inner work can see beyond their own biases to something transcendent, something that crosses the boundaries of culture and individual experience. <strong>People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is Really Real<em>\u00a0<\/em>in the world.<\/strong> They will see things through a narrow keyhole. They\u2019ll see instead what they need reality to be, what they\u2019re afraid it is, or what they\u2019re angry about. <strong>They\u2019ll see everything through their aggression, their fear, or their agenda. In other words, they won\u2019t see\u00a0<em>it\u00a0<\/em>at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s the opposite of true contemplatives, who have an enhanced capacity to see what is, whether it\u2019s favorable or not, whether it meets their needs or not, whether they like it or not, and whether that reality causes weeping or rejoicing. <strong>Most of us will usually misinterpret our experience\u00a0<em>until\u00a0<\/em>we have been moved out of our false center.<\/strong> Until then, there is too much of the self in the way. Most of us do not see things as they are; we see things as\u00a0<em>we are<\/em>. That is no small point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we touch our deepest image of self, a deeper image of reality, or a new truth about God, we\u2019re touching something that opens us to the sacred. We\u2019ll want to weep or to be silent, or to run away from it and change the subject because it\u2019s too deep, it\u2019s too heavy. As T. S. Eliot wrote, \u201chuman kind cannot bear very much reality.\u201d [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>That\u2019s why I\u2014and so many others\u2014emphasize contemplation. It\u2019s the way of going to the experience of the absolute without going toward ideology. There\u2019s a difference. It\u2019s going toward the experience of the good, the true, the beautiful, the real without going into a head trip, or taking the small self\u2014or one\u2019s momentary vantage point\u2014too seriously.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>===================================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Everything is Going to be Ok. Everything.<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"auto\" height=\"15\" src=\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9\/images\/b66516eb-1f2d-8d90-0e02-d4223f78f6f7.png\">Near the end of his life, Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest, professor, and author, became fascinated by a German trapeze troupe called the Flying Rodleighs. In their flying and spinning, he saw more than an exhilarating show\u2014he saw an illustration of our life with God.Nouwen recognized that the flyer\u2014the person soaring through the air\u2014was not the star of the trapeze show. <strong>The flyer\u2019s maneuvers are only possible because he fully trusts that he will be caught. Everything depends on the catcher. <\/strong><br><br>Nouwen saw the connection to the life of faith. \u201cI can only fly freely when I know there is a catcher to catch me,\u201d he wrote. Nouwen continued:<strong>\u201cIf we are to take risks, to be free, in the air, in life, we have to know there\u2019s a catcher. We have to know that when we come down from it all, we\u2019re going to be caught, we\u2019re going to be safe. <\/strong>The great hero is the least visible. Trust the catcher.\u201dNouwen\u2019s trapeze illustration captures an important reality. The courage to obey God is proportional to how safe we believe we are. <br><br>In Naaman\u2019s story, this sense of safety is what the king of Israel lacked. His fear prevented him from courageously helping his neighbor, and from fulfilling God\u2019s purposes for Israel. I suspect his vision of God and his goodness was deficient.Maybe the king had forgotten the stories of how the Lord had rescued his ancestors from Egypt with signs and wonders, how he gave Joshua victory when the people entered the promised land, or the great ways he protected David\u2014Israel\u2019s greatest king. The king most certainly had ignored God\u2019s many promises to protect Israel if they remained faithful to his covenant. <strong>Without being grounded in these stories and assurances the danger of his enemies filled his imagination more than the benevolence of his God<\/strong><br><br>.For the Christian, the New Testament takes this assurance even further. The cross is where we witness Jesus\u2019 ultimate surrender of control to the Father.<strong> In death, Jesus released the bar to fly through the air entrusting himself entirely into the Father\u2019s hands, and the resurrection is proof that God caught him and that he will catch us too. <\/strong>Therefore, we are free to truly fly\u2014to trust God by loving both our neighbors and our enemies no matter how much the world threatens us.<br><br>Last year, Tim Keller, one of our generation\u2019s most influential Christian ministers and thinkers, passed away. I had the privilege of meeting Tim a few times and found him to be as thoughtful, humble, and wise in person as he was in the pulpit and with his pen. In 2020, after his cancer diagnosis, he was asked what he would say to Christians who are nervous about the future. <strong>His response is a reminder to trust the Catche<\/strong>r:\u201cIf Jesus Christ was actually raised from the dead\u2026then everything\u2019s going to be alright. Whatever you\u2019re worried about right now, whatever you are afraid of, everything is actually going to be ok. Because we\u2019re not just talking about resurrected people\u2014and this is where Christianity is unique\u2014we\u2019re talking about a resurrected world. There are plenty of other religions that talk about a future afterlife which is a non-material world. In other words, you get a consolation for the world we\u2019ve lost. Christianity says it\u2019s not just your bodies being resurrected but the world is actually going to be a material world that\u2019s cleansed from all evil and suffering and sin. <strong>If Jesus Christ was raised from the dead then the whole world is going to be resurrected and everything is going to be ok. Everything.<\/strong><br><br>\u201dDAILY SCRIPTURE<br><a href=\"https:\/\/withgoddaily.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9&amp;id=b9e64c64af&amp;e=f52fc38132\">ROMANS 8:18-25\u00a0<br>2 KINGS 5:1-27<\/a><br><br>WEEKLY PRAYERAmbrose of Milan (340 &#8211; 397)Preserve your work, Lord. Guard the gift you have given even to those who pull back.<br>For I knew I was not worthy to be called your servant, but by your grace I am what I am.<br>And grant that I may know how with genuine affection to mourn with those who sin. Grant that as often as I learn of the sin of anyone who has fallen, I may suffer with them, and not scold them in my pride, but mourn and weep with them, so that in weeping over another I may also mourn for myself.<br>Amen.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Really Real Richard Rohr invites us to enter the Reign of God\u2014what he describes as the \u201cReally Real\u201d\u2014even though we face many difficult \u201crealities\u201d in our lives. Jesus announced, lived, and inaugurated for history a new social order. He called it the&nbsp;Reign&nbsp;or&nbsp;Kingdom of God,&nbsp;and it became the guiding image of his entire ministry. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23495"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23495"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23502,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23495\/revisions\/23502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}