I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two—
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.
—Langston Hughes

I’ve been tired of waiting – haven’t you? – for the world to become good and beautiful and kind, tired of waiting for the more and better life than we ever dreamed of that Jesus offered (John 10:10 The Message). Tired of waiting for what we pray for every day, generation after generation: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So tired of waiting, I, too, have wanted to cut the world open “and see what worms are eating at the rind.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Jesus said, “for it is [God’s] good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). The reign of God, he said, the good life you’ve been dreaming about for so long, is at hand; just turn around and start living it today (Mark 1:15). And I want to ask, “Jesus, what were you smokin’? Have you not seen the mess the world continues to be?” Is waiting for Jesus to return with the kingdom of God in hand like Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot, waiting for someone who never arrives?

I have known the frustration and disappointment of waiting forever for something, even for what I understood to be a promise of God, a promise that it seems will never be fulfilled. And I’ve come to understand that Cassius was on to something when he said, “Men at some time are masters of their fates: / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves” (Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 2).

If God’s reign on earth seems distant and elusive, the reason is not because it is slow in coming, it’s because we have not received it and welcomed it. We have loved this life more than the life Christ offers, the life that really is life. “How often,” Jesus lamented, “have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37). And you were not willing!

Isaiah put it another way in analyzing the plight of his people. “Why do we fast,” Israel asked God, “and you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice” (Isa. 58:3)? Why do we continue to practice our religious traditions when God seems to pay no attention, when life seems to be no easier for all our effort at faithfulness?

And God said: The reason is, you practice religion for what you can get out of it personally, and you seek your benefit by taking advantage of others. You pray for peace while bickering and fighting with each other, and you support a society filled with injustice and oppression: the wealthy maintain an obscene lifestyle on the backs of the poor, and your economic system, among other results, creates poverty, homelessness, hunger, and deprivation of health care.

If you want to live the life you’ve been hoping and waiting for, the first step is not to do something to create it, it’s to stop doing things that prevent it. Stop harming yourselves and your neighbors. As long as you support the kind of society you’ve been living in, Isaiah heard God say, you’ll never have the quality of life you dream about and I offer.

Stop supporting injustice in your legal system; get rid of exploitation in the workplace; stop paying unlivable wages to laborers; end practices that create chronic hunger and homelessness; end the system that deprives the poor and middle class of access to adequate healthcare; stop denying the rights of hospitality to the refugee and sojourner; and get rid of the divisions that set people against each other. Stop blaming victims for their plight. Stop doing whatever deprives anyone of a full and healthy life (Isaiah 58:1-14; Matt. 25:31-46).

Last week Pastor Jeff challenged us to consider what our souls most seek, what it is we’re really living for. As he put it, “what are we doing that lasts longer than our breath on a cold day?” Thomas Merton posed a similar question. “If you want to identify me,” he wrote, “ask me what I am living for, in detail.” Then he added a second part as important as the first, “and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for” (My Argument with the Gestapo).

What keeps us from living the life we’re praying for, the kingdom of God, is almost always found within our own hearts, in the values we express, the choices we make, and the loyalties that drive our decisions – as, for example, how we choose to distribute wealth as we invest and spend our money, and the choices we make in the voting booth every election day. In every instance we have the opportunity to stop doing things that prevent our receiving the abundant life we seek.

If we’re tired of waiting for the world to become good and beautiful and kind, maybe the problem is that we’re waiting for it tomorrow and not living it today. We’re victims of “destination addiction,” the idea that the good life is in the next place, the next job, the next partner, the next moment, the next life. Until we give up that idea, the abundant life will never be where we are. So seek first the kingdom of God; life, full and abundant life, is standing right in front of you, continuing to offer itself.