Don’t Look For the Kingdom in a Place

Continually, Jesus described the Kingdom in terms that one can’t point to and identify specifically—but in every story, the Kingdom was the essential piece. The Kingdom is mixed in and present already. It’s like leaven in a loaf of bread. A person can’t find the leaven after the loaf is baked. But the loaf would be completely deflated and radically different if the leaven were missing. The Kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed that sprouts into a giant bush. Someone couldn’t find the original mustard seed after the bush has grown, but birds could not nest in the branches were it not for the…