I wrote a note to a friend today, and thought this would make a good post. Edited for public viewing and expounded upon.

Sometimes we think everything is supposed to happen instantly, work, job, cultural adapation, friends, family, etc, etc, and everying is limited to this thing we call time. Its awful, but something I've learned specficially when Andrew's mom passed away two years ago, that there is a time and place for everything. For us, there was a time of intense grief, and then a time of healing, but that doesn't mean that we still have grief and still need healing, but there are times and places for it all.


Yesterday, I sat church, with my own grief. Grief of time lost. Grief of loss of relationships. Grief of saying goodbye to my aunt and uncle as they move onward to Cyprus. I stood and sat in church as I used to watch my uncle do, and let everything wash over me. When I first watched him, I wondered why, and yesterday, I completely understood.


My collegues in the worship band sang their hearts out. They sang about God being our hope, our fortress, and how much we need him. Yesterday, I desperately felt that need.


And even more so as we sat down, as the men next to me silently wept with me. They too have felt keenly the large hole made by my aunt and uncles absence.


It is  overwhlelming, becuase moving out of an "old" time period into a "new" one, is exhausting. Physcially, mentally, spiritually, but its vital and incredibly necessary.

And so the preacher stood up. Not surprisingly for our little church, she was a woman. Eloquently she spoke passionatly about Jesus' charge for us to humble ourselves as children, and depend upon God.

What struck me most (besides the fact that she had an incredibly well prepped and arrange sermon, even to this jaded sermon listener) was that she talked about the price of the Kingdom.

Those of us who believe in Jesus and believe that His Kindgom is not physical, but spiritual, long to see more people understand what the real Kindgom of Heaven is. Its not pearls from the Carribean lining walls of churches, its not Big Bibles being thumped by passionarte preachers, its not reams of paper devoted to theologies and ideas of what man thinks God might or might not be, and its not even our revered Scriptures that tell us the Story.

It's God living among us. Its God's Spirit showing us what is good and perfecct. Its life here and life to come. Its knowing who Jesus was, is and what He will be. Its understand a God in three persons, yet fully God.

And this Kindgom will increase, but it means we have to decrease and become like little children dependent on God. But at the same time we must understand the price.

Because its far easier to think of the positives and present and future glories, rather than the price. I thought long ago I paid my price. I left my country, my comfort zone, my suburbia, and I came to live here, in Granada, en el Zaidin (my neighborhood). I left my family and friends, and came here. 

Strangely enough, even though I left most of my family, I was given a small bit of it. Peter and Deb and Sam. Together, we learned and grew and cried and prayed and saw the best and the worst of each other. We gave and sang and worshipped and complained and wallowed sometimes too.

But as of last week, that moment is gone. It was a vital and important moment. But it is finished. And for both us and them, this is part of the price, the sacrifice, the sadness that is necessary to see as Jesus prayed, "your kingdom come...."

May the price we pay be so insignifanct, that we forgot it all and see only "His will be done..."