God has rescued us from the power of darkness
and transferred us into the empire of God’s Beloved.
—Colossians 1.13
Why, really, do they call Jesus a king?
Christ is beyond our categories: not just a personal savior,
but the sovereign ruler of an empire—
a commonwealth in direct opposition to the Roman Empire
and all human empires of power and authority,
worldly systems of privilege and exclusion—
no, an empire of grace, in which the law of the land is love,
in which the Powers are those of healing and forgiveness.
The oblivious go on, unknowing. They cling to power,
trade pain for profit, but they are pretending.
Love reigns, as immutable as gravity.
Despite all appearances this is the realm
you have been delivered into—
not a state of mind, not a promise, a reward for the deserving,
but the real world. Here. Now.
Trust this mystery. You belong forever to the Beloved,
a citizen of the Empire of Love.
Make yourself at home.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net