“The possibility for this collective work of individuals transforming the world is rooted in the nature of how we exercise influence on creation around us. Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, makes clear that each of us has a ‘kingdom’ or ‘queendom,’ its boundaries determined by the range of our effective will, where what we want done is done….
God has endowed each of us with a ‘realm’ where our will is done, for good or ill. This is the mental and physical space where what we do and say has a significant bearing on the outcome of events. If our queendom functions well and is characterized by virtue, those it affects will be encouraged toward right function and true virtue. If our kingdom is dysfunctional and characterized by vice, those it touches will be encouraged toward dysfunction and vice…
Though we may wish for the peace and security of a safe harbor where vital decisions do not need to be made, God will not infringe upon the range of our effective will, our kingdoms or queendoms; and thus we must make decisions…
It is entirely up to us whether we are collaborators with God, working for the good, or competitors against God, establishing ourselves as rulers of our little universes…The goal is to align our own little queendoms and kingdoms with the great kingdom, the range of God’s effective will, so that we can say continually, ‘Not my will, but thine be done.’
We see that the decisions we make – what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, where we live, who we spend time with (in other words, all the things we do within our kingdoms and queendoms) – have an impact not only on our own lives but on the lives of those around us…Our kingdoms will either be rooted in the values we discover in God’s kingdom – equity, justice, compassion, patience, love, and more – or they will not…
By creating space for reflection, evaluation, planning, and personal lifestyle change, the practice of Christian simplicity teaches us to recognize and reject the value systems of the world and replace them with the value systems of God’s kingdom. Additionally, simplicity creates for us space, time, energy, and resources so that we might reorder our lives to intentionally pursue God’s kingdom in all of our daily living. A thousand decisions a day, ten thousand decisions a week, millions of decisions in a lifetime – the summation of the impact of our earthly kingdoms on ourselves and our world…
Whatever individual steps we take, the goal is that our priorities will increasingly shift from meeting our own needs to addressing the needs of others.”
-Richard Foster
Sometimes the only way to say what I want to say is by quoting someone else 🙂