something stirring

this excerpt from Rick Mckinley's book "This Beautiful Mess" sums up/echoes quite a few recent conversations with a number of different friends. puts into words some of the frustrations and dreamings that i am beginning to think might be on the hearts of more than just an handful of people...

"when i compared the vision for life in the kingdom that Jesus put forth in the Gospels with the experience i had at church as a new Christian, I noticed a discrepancy. Jesus' fresh perspectives on money, suffering, justice and love had been refashioned into a tidy way of life for those who did their best to convey that they no longer needed much of what he had to say.

At eighteen, I sensed the problem without quite being able to say it. In all the tidiness, the wonder of the gospel of Jesus seemed to be disappearing. As a recent convert, I was alive in that wonder. It was changing my life. But looking around, I realized that most of Jesus' followers lived pretty much like everyone else - except we hoped for heaven. The Christian life began to look like one long waiting game of Bible studies and boring parties. If I was lucky, a bus would hit me and i'd go straight to heaven. Until then the kingdom life i was reading about in the gospels would have to wait.

I felt disappointed - like i had entered C.S. Lewis' wardrobe, full of anticipation, but instead of standing in a magical place with fawns and witches and every kind of possibility, i had somehow managed to walk through the wardrobe and into a dentist's office. peoplesat around reading magazines and asking me to calm down, to be quiet, to take a seat. they said it very nicely of course, like you would in a dentist's office. the place was clean, with polite smiles everywhere, sterile smells and bad Muzak. What are you supposed to do in a waiting room except try to kill time? I did a lot of that. I killed time in college groups. In church. In Bible college. I even killed time as a pastor.

But leaning back in my chair one day I realized that the walls of the waiting-room were actually paper-thin. behind the veil of western evangelicalism existed an untamed, revolutionary reality. The world on the other side of the wardrobe did exist, i realized. you just have to tear down the fake walls first, kill the fake music, and let yourself go crashing with newborn, wide-eyed anticipation out into the world.
And there it is all around you. The kingdom of God."

(page 85-86)