On Earth as It Is in Heaven
Beloveds,
Every Sunday, in congregations across Nebraska, we pray the words Jesus taught us: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
We say it so often that it’s easy to forget how bold a prayer it is. We aren’t asking God to take us away from this world. We’re asking God to transform it, and offering ourselves as part of the answer.
Next Tuesday, many of us will step into a voting booth. I want to suggest that this, too, can be an act of faith.
Not because God belongs to any party or candidate. God’s name isn’t on anybody’s yard sign. But because what we believe about God shapes what we hope for the world. If we believe God loves our neighbors, the hungry, the sick, the stranger, the child, the creation itself, then how we use our voice in public life is one more place where that belief takes shape. The ballot is one small way we co-create with God the world we pray for.
Disciples have never been strangers to public life. Alexander Campbell himself served in Virginia’s constitutional convention, sitting alongside James Madison and John Marshall, wrestling with what a just society should look like. We cast our ballots as people who stand on the shoulders of saints who fought, marched, and sometimes gave everything so that more voices could be heard.
So pray before you vote. Vote your faith, thoughtfully and prayerfully. And then remember this: whatever happens on Tuesday, we will gather at the Lord’s Table on Sunday, and we’ll pass the same bread and the same cup and remember we belong to one another. As Disciples, we are a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world, and the world could use a little more of that right now.
The kingdom we pray for doesn’t arrive on Election Day. But every day is an opportunity to live toward it.
Grace and peace,
Robin