The Upside Down Kingdom

The Kingdom of God always seems to catch me off guard.

What I mean by that is: I never seem to ‘get used’ to it. It's so completely different from conventional thinking and ‘common sense.’

It’s still foreign to me, even though I call myself a Christian. It makes me uncomfortable. The Kingdom of God is really something of another world. No wonder I miss it so often.  

In God's Kingdom, success is not defined by accomplishing goals or achieving some kind of status or power. Success is defined by obedience to God and faith.

The Kingdom of God embraces powerlessness and weakness. The Kingdom embraces death and change, while everyone else in the world scrambles to preserve their lives and attain stability.

Where other people say there is scarcity, the Kingdom says there is abundance. When people tell us to take for ourselves, God says that we are blessed when we give.

When people tell us that we should be doing something, God tells us to sit at his feet and rest in his strength.       

In Isaiah 55, God, invites Israel to exchange their thoughts, their labor, and basically everything that they have for what God has in store for them:

“All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You without money, come, buy, and eat! Yes, come! Buy wine and milk without money — it’s free!

Why spend money for what isn’t food, your wages for what doesn’t satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:1-2)

And God invites us also into this great exchange. An exchange that looks so different from any kind exchange in this world—our rags for his riches, our problems for his victory.

I forget—so often— it's in this great exchange that God reveals his glory.

And it is His glory that reveals what we are desperately holding onto for what they truly are—not really anything of worth in the eternal scheme of things.

As I continue to follow Jesus, I am amazed every time I encounter this upside down Kingdom.

And yet, today God continues to invite me into it by exchanging my thoughts, my desires, my success, my failure, my definition of 'enough', for his eternal peace, joy, patience, righteousness and love.

Jonathan Yee is a student at Binghamton University.  This is also his first time writing for the InterVarsity blog.