So last week our community encouraged one another through sharing some pretty cool glimpses of the kingdom of God. Before doing so, I addressed a question that has been brought up a few times over the past few weeks:

What do we do with those things in our lives that look like the Kingdom of God (alleviating suffering, justice, reconciliation, etc.) but don’t derive from Jesus’ people? In fact, they might even be antagonistic toward Jesus and his Church, etc.?

I noted the Church is called to witness to the reality of heaven coming to earth and we are to participate in this reality, joining in with the work of bringing heaven to earth through working for justice, peace, beauty and reconciliation efforts around us.

I noted one thing we are not called to do, however, was to set the “boundaries” of the Kingdom of God. If we understand God’s Kingdom to refer to what Dallas Willard calls the “the range of [God’s] effective will,” and we know that in Heaven—aka God’s “throne room”—his will is carried out perfectly and looks like perfect harmony, perfect peace, perfect justice, perfect, well, everything, then I believe we can point to where we see this taking place on earth, whether it be in the Church or beyond its walls, and just rest in the confidence that this is God’s desire, his effective will, his kingdom coming to pass here on earth.

This is perhaps a bit of a different paradigm for which to think of God’s Kingdom than what many of us are used to or perhaps even comfortable with. And no doubt there are theological implications to be chewed on here but I can think of at least 3 implications that directly effect how we practice our faith when we refuse to claim exclusive rights to God’s Kingdom.

First, when we concern ourselves more with observing and participating rather than prescribing what is or isn’t part of “God’s kingdom,” we can stop wasting energy on drawing hard lines between what counts or doesn’t count as coming from God. This is honestly a huge relief for me. I spent a good part of my life dividing the world into “sacred” and “secular” and anything secular was deemed evil – it was the “excess chaff” to be burned off and all that. Holding this conviction that we are not called to set the boundaries of the Kingdom, though, has released me of the burden to have to decide what is and isn’t sacred. In fact, I’m inclined these days to see the world as all sacred and that God’s goodness and presence permeate every corner of this good creation, leaving no stone unturned from which to find his good and perfect will being carried out. That’s a game changer.

Second, you and I don’t need to try to “own” every good thing either. If something looks like justice, healing, mercy, beauty or reconciliation, then we can claim that it carries the DNA of God’s will and it doesn’t need our stamp of approval to situate it within the Church. It just means the Spirit is doing what the Spirit has always done—bringing order out of chaos, light out of darkness, restoration out of brokenness. This frees up you and me to simply name it, join in with it or just to celebrate it without scrambling to own it.

Thirdly, and perhaps this is tied to the first point, but this allows us to recover a bigger vision of God. If the Kingdom is as big as Jesus describes—like yeast working its way through the whole dough, like a tiny mustard seed that grows uncontrollably, like treasure hidden in a field no one expected—then we should probably expect to find signs of God’s will in all sorts of unexpected places. We should expect the Spirit to move beyond our categories. We should expect heaven’s life to leak through the cracks of this world in ways we didn’t orchestrate or predict! And lo and behold, when we have eyes to see such things, we do!

But can’t darkness masquerade as light (2 Cor. 11:14)? Sure. Typically, though, when something looks like good fruit on the surface but is rooted in selfishness, manipulation or pride, we usually don’t need a theology degree or some supernatural insights to tell the difference. The fruit will eventually reveal the tree. The “light” Paul warns us about that Satan is imitating is the kind that shines brightly but casts long shadows— compassion that’s actually manipulation, generosity that’s actually self-serving, humility that’s actually image management. This kind of false light inevitably causes more wounds and pulls creation backward. God’s Kingdom never looks like this.

Which leads me to reiterate: if something genuinely reflects justice, mercy, reconciliation or healing—if it participates in what Jesus calls “the renewal of all things”—then one way or another it is a glimpse of the Kingdom, even if the people involved don’t call it that. Full stop.

Maybe the real invitation is simply this: to become the kind of people who aren’t threatened by goodness wherever it appears, but who name it, celebrate it and join it when we can. Again, our job isn’t to control the Kingdom—it’s to recognize it. And to let those glimpses shape us into people who carry that same renewal and hope into the world.