The Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom!

As I said earlier I have enjoyed the chance to refresh, recharge and refocus on this sabbatical and our week in Southern California was incredible too. We visited Saddleback and had some time to hang out and laugh as a family at Disney. My mom flew in and met us for this week that we kicked off in San Bernardino at my Uncle Jim and Aunt Carolyn's place before heading to Disney and Saddleback.

I have always loved Disney and the idea that a place could be created where parents and children could have fun together. That was Walt Disney's dream and above all else Walt Disney was a dreamer of big dreams and has passed that legacy on to others. Disneyland is a place full of laughter, adventure, memories and stories. It was a blessing to be able to spend a couple of days there. I'm not good enough with words to be able to describe the wonderful looks on our kids faces as they hugged characters and connected with Mickey, Minnie, Peter Pan, Wendy and Goofie - characters they had seen in movies and on TV. But the physical connection was amazing to see.

Disney's dream was to create a world seperate from the world outside the gates where generations could play together and be inspired, challenged and encouraged.

As we rode the monorail from our hotel to the Magic Kingdom I caught sight of the hotels across the street that help to serve the nearly 6 million visitors that come here each year. As we moved on I couldn't help but feel sorry for the hotel operators, although they are most definitley profiting from the people coming to Disneyland. Here's what struck me - they are so close to the action yet no matter what they do to their hotels - they will never "be" part of the magic of the "kingdom" of Disneyland. They can offer large pools, free high speed internet, free meals, gourmet coffee, luxurious rooms - but they will always, always be "across the street from Disneyland".

"Across the street from Disneyland" - what a horrible place to spend life. I thought how sad to be so close to a place filled with joy, stories, laughter and energy and yet be on the outside looking in. Playing a necessary yet comparitively secondary role in the bigger story. Forgive me if my analogy is flawed but for me it hit home as I have been contemplating the role of the body of Christ (the church) as it expreses the kingdom of God in community and communities thoughout the world. For me the Kingdom of God is a beautiful "place/moment/time/people" full of adventure, risk, joy, sorrow, exhilaration, messiness and above all the peace, presence and love of the father - perhaps hard to express in words but yet you know when you have and are experiencing it. I believe we are called to live in and by the way we live - love those God loves - to the kingdom. The "kingdom" is an exhilarating place to live if we are doing so missionally and incarnating the love of Christ.

But when that "kingdom" becomes about personal preferences, expectations, rules and "culture" run amuck - we, the body of Jesus become like the hotels across the street from Disney. We easily make ourselves and the church, bit characters in the grand story. And that is sad - because it doesn't have to be that way. The kingdom is where the real story is being written and to be so close and to be doing many good things and providing many good services and yet missing out on what's going on "across the street" is profoundly sad and ultimately such a waste. Even worse - thinking that somehow by relying on our programs and events we have created something that resembles the kingdom. Perhaps that's the inherent sadness I feel about the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. The younger son - who left and returned - knew what it was like to "live" in the kingdom - whereas the older brother couldn't seem to experience the kingdom first hand and had instead gotten used to living "across the street from it."

Perhaps you don't agree with my analogy and that's okay - it was just something that caught me as I rode the monorail.

For me I want to live heroicly in the vast freedom of adventure that is the kingdom of God and I want to express that daily. To me that's where the church - the "body" of Jesus Christ is supposed to be. I never want to be the owner/operator of a "hotel" that's "across the street from Disney." I don't want to be part of any place that simply points people to the kingdom and yet doesn't live as part of it, instead has grown content with living near or "across the street" from it.