The Message Is The Same
When Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he withdrew to Galilee.
He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea,
in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.
From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Mt 4:12-13,17)
The message of Jesus is actually an old message. It was a message given by His Father long ago through the prophets and, therefore, it would make sense that He would continue to proclaim it when it became impossible for his cousin, John the Baptist, to do so.
Repent. The Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Those words are very loaded.
They speak to us of the need to make things right in our own lives. When we repent, we radically modify our lives so that we no longer live outside of God’s love. Instead, we do all that we can to ensure that we follow God’s law and accept God’s will for our lives.
Doing so, we see the vestiges of the Kingdom even now.
The Kingdom of God is not something that will come to us in the distant future. What will come to us then is the fullness of the Kingdom of God. However, it has been inaugurated already by the Lord and He wants us to see it and respond to it even now.
The Kingdom of God is not frightening. Rather, the Kingdom of God is full of possibility.
Respond to the Lord’s invitation to repentance so that you may come to recognize the Kingdom of Heaven all around you.
FAITH ACTION: Ask God to open your eyes to the realities of His Kingdom present in your life.