The word kingdom
isn’t used very often, but we do hear it used from time. “Animal Kingdom” is often used to refer to “a
category of living organisms comprising all animals”. Disney has gathered a group of animals
together in what is popularly known as “Disney’s Animal Kingdom.”
We read in
history books about ancient kingdoms, identified as a group of people living in
one geographical area being ruled by a king. There are still some kingdoms in
existence today, though their influence is not as strong as they were in the
past. The United Kingdom is often referred to as the UK. Here in Uganda there are four kingdoms that
remain a part of culture, a part of life and are still recognized by the
government.
One characteristic
of kingdoms is that they have one ruler.
For the United Kingdom it is now a queen. Here in Uganda each kingdom has a king. The role of the king in any kingdom is to
lead, guide and rule over the kingdom.
The role of
the people within kingdoms is to follow and submit to the authority of the king
over them. Each kingdom can only have
one king. Could you imagine the difficulties if there
were two kings in a kingdom? The king
has been given the authority, and is assumed to have the wisdom, to lead.
As people,
regardless of our culture or geographical location, we all allow some “king” to
rule us, putting us in his kingdom. The
question we each need to ask ourselves is, “Whose kingdom do I belong to?”
Sometimes
the attitudes behind slogans can draw us into kingdoms we might not otherwise
enter. The slogan makes the king sound like one we want to follow. Everywhere
we turn we are confronted with and potentially influenced by slogans such as
“Just Do it!”
“Have it Your Way”
"Because I'm Worth It"
"Yes, You Can"
"Get. Watch. Do What You Want."
Each one of
these slogans can influence us to put our allegiance to the king of self. This
can easily turn into having a kingdom of one, where self is on the throne. In this kingdom of one the focus is all about
me, myself and what I need, want or desire.
Recently,
I’ve been reading the book “A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger
Than You” (Paul David Trapp). In it the author talks about this kingdom of
one, of self, as the “little kingdom.”
The kingdom is little in the sense that it is a kingdom that has shrunk
down to only the size of my life. Here
is an excerpt: “In a fallen world there is a powerful pressure to constrict your life
to the shape and size of your life. There is a compelling tendency to forget
who you are and what you were made for. There is a tendency to be shortsighted,
myopic, and easily distracted. There is a tendency to settle for less when you
have been created for more.”
Further,
Trapp writes, “There is woven inside each
of us a desire for something more— a craving to be part of something bigger,
greater, and more profound than our relatively meaningless day-by-day
existence.” We were created to be part
of a big kingdom of The One (and only). We
are created for the Kingdom of God, with Christ at the center.
Daily
I choose the answer to the questions, “To whose authority do I submit to? Whose
kingdom am I in?” The
challenge before me is to remember I do belong to the big kingdom. The big
kingdom of The One, God’s Kingdom, in which Christ is on the throne, not me.
Jeff
