Perpetual Kingdom

More and more, I hear sad news. More and more, I realize that my physical reality does not match my expectations for the joy and blessings one might expect in life. There's so much to grieve and so much to worry over.

And yet.

I read this morning astonishing words written by Hannah Whitall Smith (I read her little devotional, God is Enough, most every morning). She writes: "In so far as God's will is done in any individual life, it does bring heaven down into that life and makes that person live in a perpetual kingdom."

A perpetual kingdom? Here? Now? In this kind of sorrowful life all around? One has only to watch the news and wonder what kind of kingdom this is.

I find this truth at work: I'm beginning to feel the perpetual kingdom inside. There's a soul kind of joy and peace and love that exist in the midst of physical distress. I think of how, in 2 Corinthians 4:16 we are told, "Do not lose heart. Though outwardly, we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day."

The inward renewal stands in stark contrast to the outward wasting. I tell my friend that it's like a hatching of the soul to live in this kind of kingdom reality when everything else--to the natural senses--wastes away in moments of loss and disappointment, disease and suffering.

So I think of our own souls more and more. This is what God promises to guard and care for. This is what lives in the perpetual kingdom, available now, to the eye of faith.