Getting In On The Ground Floor
“They departed to their own country by another way.” (Matthew 2:12) It’s a detail in the story that I had never noticed before. How come the Magi don’t stay around? Why don’t they follow Jesus wherever he goes? Instead they return home. But the answer is easy; they go home to tell their children and their children’s children, their neighbors and friends, that the savior of the world has been born and to prepare the way for the king of kings and Lord of Lords. As the Bible tells us, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Anointed One, and he shall reign for ever and ever!” By returning, the Magi are getting in on the ground floor of the Kingdom of Heaven, a kingdom which is from heaven but FOR this earth! Some twenty years ago my best friend Katy mentioned to me that if I wanted to invest I should invest in a little company that had come to her attention, a company named Google. Can you imagine how my fifty dollars (that was all I had) would have grown? But all of us have a chance to invest in something far greater than even Google! We can get in on the ground floor of the Kingdom of the Lord. How can we do this? We read in Isaiah 35, “the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose.” I think of the researcher and scientist in Africa who has invented a way to turn dry land into fertile fields, and the many people who are stewarding their land and healing the earth in small and large ways, but also the grandmother who reads the stories of the Bible to her children, restoring life where despair has entered in. How can we get in on the ground floor? Ezekiel prophesies that one day the seas will team with fish and I think of the young man, Boyan Slat who invented a way to clean up the thousands of tons of plastic in the oceans and is this day doing exactly that, but I also think of the promise that one day, “all tears will be wiped from the eyes” and how people are praying that they might have a heart like God’s; that they too might see their neighbor as the Lord sees him. On Sunday I will gather with my congregations in Hager City and in Ellsworth and in those assemblies we see ahead of time that great assembly that will be gathered round the throne. In this and in so many ways we can and are getting in on the ground floor of the kingdom and no investment however small will go to waste or be lost, every investment will have its reward and growth beyond what we can imagine. And as if that were not enough, we ourselves are part of this new creation, this restoration of all things, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” We ourselves are the product of faith working through love, God working his great work, and “of the increase of his government and of his peace there shall be no end…on the throne of David…the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this.” (Isaiah 9)
