Land of God

I've heard the Kingdom of God described in many ways, but one of my favorites is that it is an "upside-down kingdom". Read the Beatitudes. Read the sermon on the plain from Luke 6. The idea that we should love our enemies, that the poor are blessed, that we should rejoice when people persecute us - it all sounds ridiculous when we hear it with the mindset of the world. But when we listen with open hearts to the call of God, when we live among those who suffering, when experience it for ourselves - that's when we see the truth and so desperately long for that "upside-down kingdom".

The following is a poem written by Scott Bessenecker. Scott is a member of the Servants Board of Elders and the author of The New Friars and How to Inherit the Earth. Servants is a missions organization devoted to living and loving God's beloved in urban slums around the world. Every day the Servant missionaries live this "upside-down kingdom". This poem gives us a taste of that glorious Kingdom.

-Kelly Reed, CSM Chicago Co-City Director

Land of God
I wondered if the “Land of God” was fictitious
Like Atlantis and risen Elvis
Something only for the superstitious
This, yeasty, feasty, blessed be the leasty, glorious Land of God


Tucked away in a Kolkata bustee
Where ten thousand women stand for sale in a line, like vending machine candy bars
In brothels of rusty tin and musty stench and lusty-driven men
I stumbled upon it, fumbled upon it, crumpled upon it


I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise
Jesus said the prostitutes were entering the Land of God ahead of everybody else
The rich are left to wrestle their camels through needle eyes
All the while the Land of God is filling up with throw away, stow away, skid row away people

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