Luke 17:20-21 New International Version (NIV)
The Coming of the Kingdom of God
Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
I suppose this can be looked at as a matter of set theory. I draw a rather small circle around what I have done. The expansive universe outside that circle represents what I have not done. What I have done is minuscule, while what I have not done is unfathomable. Perhaps with many others, I have difficulty in thinking outside the box – of pushing the envelope. I often accept what's on my plate and focus there. This is not all bad because no matter how small the plate is, it is immensely more complex and fraught with opportunities than might at first appear. I am very, very suspicious of the tendency to see it always greener on the other side of the fence.
That said, certainly a mass amount of human poverty results from not adequately exploring what can and should be done that is not being done. Sometimes the most redemptive, productive, and promising ideas lay outside the set already contained in human knowledge and experience. Is laziness and complacency the issue here, or is it less sinister and more simply the way our brains are inherently wired? In my view, the unseen is always more important than the seen; but it is exasperatingly easy to forget this. Certainly a major and perhaps chief function of religion is to expand the human mind and experience into the territory of operative intangibles.
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