Kingdom of Heaven
How can I help you see the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God?
‘You do not have to look up at the sky because that is not where you will see the activity of the ‘Father’ so clearly that it must surely reinforce your faith. This is where people, down the centuries, have made the big mistake of turning in towards their dreaming, their imagination, and creating for themselves a Jehovah which does not exist. You will not find the ‘Father’ some place in the heavens above you. The ‘Father’ is in no special place but everywhere around you and within everything.
‘You can see the ‘Father’s’ marvelous work. Look around you at the growing things, the wheat, the grass, the flowers, the trees and birds, and in every living thing, you will see the mysterious and wonderful work of the ‘Father’ ceaselessly active. It is here that the ‘Father’ is perfectly in control. You can see that there is perfect law and order, growth, development, and eventually the harvest to bless both man and beast and birds.
‘Consider the way that a man after tilling his fields, will scatter seed over the earth and cover it over. He packs up his tools and goes home, content that eventually, if there is sufficient rain; there will be food for him to feed his children. For many days, he sleeps and wakes and does nothing more to his plants, but when he visits them he will see the blades of green pushing through the soil. Later, he will return and see the growth of stalks and leaves, and later on again he will see the forming of the seed, and then one day he will see that the grain is plump and golden and ready to harvest. Meanwhile, all this growth has taken place without any help from him. The wheat has grown in a marvellous way that he cannot explain. Is it magic? No, it is the work of the ‘Father’, the Power, Loving Intelligence throughout the universe, which inspires the work and respires through it; it is the activity of the ‘Father’ which is the INTELLIGENT LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE.
‘When you enter the Kingdom of God, you have a good feeling. You feel happy and joyous. Can you imagine how a woman would feel if she lost a large sum of money and wondered how she would feed her children? The woman of the house would be in tears and would sweep the house so thoroughly that there would not be a speck of dust – then – hidden in a dark corner she finds the treasured piece of silver and immediately her tears are dried, she begins to smile and then feels so alive and so joyous that she rushes out of her house to call in her neighbours to have a celebration party. Where she had thought she had lost everything, she was now rich after all.
‘So is it when you find the Kingdom of Heaven – the Kingdom of God. Instead of tears and fears, and hunger and sickness, you find the peace, joy, plenty, and health of the Kingdom of God. You will never experience any kind of lack again.
‘The Kingdom of God can also be likened to a very rich man who was a dealer in pearls. All his life, he had wanted to find s special pearl which would outshine all others, it would be flawless and perfect and he would be the envy of every other dealer. One day, he found such a pearl, beautiful beyond imagining, perfect beyond all others. He sold everything he owned, he abandoned all that he had accumulated, to buy this pearl and was happy beyond all dreaming.
‘What does this mean? It means that all the things he had previously valued in his life – his richly furnished house, his valuables, his way of life, plenty of food and drink, he gladly gave them all up in order to possess the treasure beyond price - the knowledge leading him into the Kingdom of God where happiness is a state of mind which cannot be touched by the outer world with all its cares and worries.
‘The ‘Kingdom of God’ is within you, you enter the ‘Kingdom of God’ when you realize fully that the ‘Father’ is active at all times within you. It is a state of mind, of perception and understanding that the Reality behind and within all things visible, is the ‘Father’ and is beautiful and perfect and that all the things which are contrary to beauty, harmony, health, abundance are the creations of man’s wrong thinking.
