Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. — Matthew 11:28–30 MSG
It finally made sense — the goal, the point of it all: to bring Heaven to earth, to live with the Life to come as the telos, the fulfillment. Heaven was the framework, and my life was to be lived by its cadence. There’s no program for this, no lists, no particularities, no subscription plans, no twelve-week studies.
Heaven meeting earth is the culmination of the whole story, the Kingdom made manifest, Myth become Substance.
How? Work backwards from Heaven.
I could look back and see all the ways God had been inviting me, showing me ways to live in His Reality. When God’s Kingdom meets earth, it does so, first, as the Person of Jesus, and Kingdom is about reign and rule. That means most of our life needs to be a kind of body and soul reorientation to that Kingdom. A submission, but not as loss, as Divine Expansion.
Heaven meets earth in all our decisions to embody Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. In the ways we open our homes and share our tables, in the ways we choose kindness and Grace and forgiveness in the middle of raging fights, in the way we stand firm for what is eternal, in a world tossed to and fro by every changing wind of belief.
- Attitudes matter, motivations matter, and every bit of our lives is an opportunity to bring Heaven to earth, to spread Jesus’ reign of Love.
Think of fullness, imagine substance, imagine Beauty up from ashes, dream of all things made new. And then imagine your whole life, governed by that Reality. When I say your, I mean it. You, personally. What does your living need to become? What does your life change into? How is church transformed? Community? Career? Relationships? What if, based on these ideas of identity, of Truth and Goodness and Beauty, on Virtue, on Becoming, on Embodiment, on Imagination, you developed your own rhythm of life? What if you took ownership, were responsible for your gifts, your calling, your desires?
And what if, from this foundation, from this new Reality, you let yourself dream as big as possible and then pursued it with everything you had? What if you were honest, confronted all the darkness within you, all the selfishness, and committed to renewal? What if you imagined all you could be, all that created and designed potential, all those talents within you, longing to be multiplied, to transform you and the world around you, and what if you leaned in?
What if you became?
What if you took the first step, of thousands, toward becoming a Saint?
And sure, there are the tried and tested and true methods: prayer, fasting, Bible reading, solitude, contemplation... Those are how-tos of spiritual formation; I’m talking about the why-be a Saint, with some wisdom gathered from the path. The rough and brutal, the downs and the outs, but also, what can happen, even to someone as broken and easily swayed as me.
I am no Saint, not yet. I am no guru, no sage. I’m just on the path. I’m just imagining who I might be, what I might do, for Love and for Kingdom, and trying my best to embody that Reality.
Our world is desperate for Saints. It is sold all kinds of lies, all kinds of rituals and routines that lead to emptiness, mediocrity, and the full unmaking of who we are. I walk down the street and I see the languishing, some in rags, some in pressed suits; I see the loneliness, the insecurity, the suffering.
I see the broken hearts, the trembling lips, the ill and decrepit. I see the forgotten, on the street corner or alone in a coffee shop; the betrayed in the back rows of a church; the abused and the swept aside looking through windows, aching for a shoulder to cry on, arms to fall into. I see the burnout, the exhaustion, the depression. I see the least of these, the downtrodden and the oppressed, and I see how often our answers are superficial and momentary.
And I see what a Saint would do, could do, in those situations. I see Heaven meeting earth, offering joy to the languishing, compassion and friendship to the lonely, real answers to the harsh and brutal and raw questions of life — answers that aren’t sugarcoated or prepackaged, answers that feel less like a definition and more like devotion. I see Saints offering strong shoulders to those with broken hearts. I see Jesus, embodied, through these Saints, offering protection, hope, rest, time, and a kind of fullness that echoes with the Life to come. I see that Light reaching into the darkness, and I see the hands of those wandering, lost, confused, reaching out, grasping for us, Saints on the path, not because of what we are but because of who we point to.
The Source.
I see an ordinary revolution, a commonplace uprising, an unremarkable overthrow. Ordinary people transformed by an extraordinary God, toppling down sin and Death and darkness and bringing Light and Life and Hope.
I see Every Day Saints transforming the world.
God, thank you for meeting us where we are — whether in a deep valley or on a mountaintop, in peace or in turmoil — and loving us in that place. And even more than that, thank you for your promise to transform us as we journey with you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Adapted with permission from Room for Good Things to Run Wild: How Ordinary People Become Every Day Saints by Josh Nadeau, copyright Josh Nadeau.
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Your Turn
Do you see God showing you ways to live in His Reality? Part of our calling is to be the Hands and Feet of Jesus bringing Heaven to earth with how we behave. It’s not about us; it’s about who Jesus is! ~ Devotionals Daily