What are you looking for?

 Psalm 27:13 NIV

13 I remain confident of this:

    I will see the goodness of the Lord

    in the land of the living

For the longest time when anyone mentioned the Kingdom of God I thought they were talking about heaven.  It took a much closer reading of the Bible to realize that those words we tend to just breeze past every Sunday when we say the Lord’s Prayer are what we are supposed to strive for - “Thy will be done, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Making the Kingdom come on earth is what God wants us to do, so that all will see God’s goodness in the land of the living.

It’s not always easy to see the goodness of the Lord in our daily lives.  Media tends to do its best to focus our attention on the things that are wrong with the world.  For example, I used to get headlines sent to my phone from the local ABC affiliate.  I recently unsubscribed because every single one of those headlines was about a shooting or stabbing or terrible accident in which people died or at least backed up traffic for ages.  And yes, I do know that the First Commandment of the news industry is “If it bleeds, it leads.”. But still . . . 

Whenever a few people do something bad, the news we hear is that “5% of these people did this terrible thing,” not “95% of these people did these good things.”  We have to work hard to find the good news...and by good news I do not mean that a bad thing happened to someone we think deserves to have bad things happen to them.  There is a vast difference between, “Yay, my team won.” and “Yay, your team lost.” Both statements describe the same event, but one celebrates goodness and the other does not.

In order to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living I have to look for the goodness in other humans.  (Admittedly, some people make it hard to find goodness in them, but that doesn’t excuse me from trying to find it.)  Focusing on the good in the world around me makes it easier to approach others with loving kindness and a peaceful heart.  That, in turn, makes is easier to see the goodness of the Lord in everything and everyone around me.

Loving God, we know that it is easier to see the good when we seek the good.  May we focus our vision first on what is good, loving, and kind in your world in order that we might bring your kingdom to existence on the earth as it is in heaven.  Amen