The biology of the Kingdom

Some thoughts I had while walking through a harvested field this morning:

The Kingdom of God is not a machine, but a living thing. Understanding it is a matter for biology, not mechanical engineering.

A machine has no life within itself. It cannot grow, cannot heal itself, cannot take the initiative to "feed" itself with the energy sources that will keep it running. It cannot respond to spontaneous influences from outside--sunlight, voices, physical touch--except in a few ways that are tightly limited by how it has been programmed. It never really lasts very long, and when it fails, it leaves nothing to take its place. Someone needs to build a replacement for it that has no organic connection to the original machine.

Living things have their life within them--a life that is God-given, as opposed to the mere man-made functionality of a machine. Living things have built-in redundancy, so that if part of them dies or fails, the rest can carry on and compensate for what is missing. A machine can be manufactured very quickly, but a mature organism--an oak, say, or an elephant--is the result of a long process of gradual change and growth. In a fallen world, all living things have their death within them. But they also carry the seeds of life for future generations, so that their line will continue despite individual deaths and changing environments. Coconuts float to distant shores, take root, and grow into new coconut palms that live on even if their parent trees are cut down; caterpillars grow up to be the next generation of butterflies, like those that came before them and yet never quite the same; and children carry on the physical and mental characteristics of their parents, but no one is ever exactly like any of his ancestors or siblings.

Don't expect the Kingdom of Heaven to be perfected all in a day, as if it was a car that is functional as soon as it comes off the assembly line. Our Lord compared the Kingdom to seed growing in the ground, to leaven working through a batch of dough, to a dragnet that pulls in all kinds of fish, and to a landowner who hires many laborers for his vineyard at different times and under different circumstances. Be patient with the Lord's Kingdom and with the people in it, just as He is patient with you. And as for yourself, don't expect spiritual growth to come through mere force of will, but through consistently and humbly receiving the gifts He gives you daily: His rain and sun, and the minerals that you draw up from the soil where you are planted, and the others around you who break the force of winds and storms, and His own diligence to tend and prune you so that you will be more fruitful.