I Saw the Kin-Dom of God Last Night

I saw the kin-dom of God last night. I’ve been busy today, no time to write, but I thought you’d be mad if I saw it and didn’t tell you about it.

(Sometimes these days I experiment with saying “kin-dom” instead of “kingdom” because while I believe God’s sovereignty is a Big Deal, I’m almost sure God is always using God’s power to draw people together, like family, like love, like kin.)

Last night there was an “It Gets Better” meeting. You know, people a lot younger than I getting together to talk about their lives. Specifically, about their lives as LGBTQ+ people – the queer and beautiful people of God – though they are sometimes not so sure about the “beautiful” or the “of God” part of that. So they talk about it.

I guess they talk about it. I never actually go in there; that meeting isn’t for me. I have to be there because I’m the one with a Mansfield address so I can rent that room in that place. Galileo pays for the room. Galileo pays me to go sit in the lobby and work a little and pray a little for the group that is meeting behind a closed door a few yards away.

And somebody else from Galileo sent homemade cookies last night, cookies of a kind I cannot get out of my head. Yes, they shared one with me. Sweet baby Jesus, those cookies were good, and the milk that came with them. The cookies were not the point, but they could have been. They were that good.

But the people. The people were the point. They met for the 90 minutes that we were on the books for that room, and then they shambled into the public space where I was, only they weren’t ready to leave. By accident they formed themselves back into a circle, standing now, and talked some more. Laughing. Bending at the waist from laughing. Heads thrown back, laughing.

And oh, I wish you could have seen it. They were dark brown and light brown and peachy-pinky-yellow. They were all the colors, a rainbow of God’s beloveds. They were Christian, Muslim, decidedly non-religious. Students, workers, wishing for work. In relationships. Alone. Lonely. Content. Depressed and joyful, anxious and brave. Women and men, all along a spectrum, just themselves.

Laughing.

Their departure from the building and the parking lot took another 45 minutes, I’m guessing. 45 of those kin-dom of God minutes, precious minutes during which every single person knows for absolute certain that they are God’s children, beloved by God, with whom God is well pleased. Transfigured, bright shining as the sun.

I know, because I saw it. With that vision in my recent memory, I am the luckiest person on God’s green earth today. So I thought I would share it with you, so you could feel lucky, too.

This essay has been published in We Were Spiritual Refugees: A Story to Help You Believe in Church (Eerdmans 2020). More about We Were Spiritual Refugees at katiehays.net.