Luke 17:20-21

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
Luke 17:20-21


This is interesting... I think we naturally ask the same question as the Pharisees sometimes.  We want to know when God's kingdom is going to come on the earth.  But our answer would probably be the same: the kingdom of God doesn't happen externally as we watch for it.  It is something we ARE, that we BECOME.  In one way, it is already here, and we're part of it, working to expand it and tell people about it, but in another way if we are talking about a perfect society... we're still becoming that.  We're not there yet.  But either way, it is never something that we could say, oh, yeah... we'll be perfect on July 9th, 2062.  It doesn't work that way. :)  We have to be perfecting ourselves... and how long does it take to perfect ourselves?  Who knows.  Longer than a lifetime, for most of us.  And as a society?  Longer than that.  We can look back in history and see progress.  You don't see much human sacrifice anymore, for instance.  Less slavery, but we still need to work on that.  And we've introduced other bad things.  It's going to take us a while.  But that definitely isn't a reason to give up.  It just means that we get more time to work on it.  And we can probably use all the time we can get. :)  Today, let's make sure we're at least a little bit better than we were yesterday.  Let's continue to improve with all the time we have.