A Prayer about Imagining God’s Peaceful Kingdom

Heavenly Father,

Enliven our imaginations so that 

we may see the reality of your kingdom of peace 

which has already come and which awaits fulfillment. 

Too often we are like the skeptical people 

Hemingway refers to in The Sun Also Rises, 

who mock those who believe in beauty, saying, 

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”* 

You have said that one day 

the “wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat” (Isaiah 11:6)

It’s not just pretty to think so 

but profound to believe.

Indeed, you have already sent our Savior, 

the one in whom “The Spirit of the Lord” rests, 

in whom 

“the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, 

the Spirit of counsel and might, 

the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord” 

is embodied (Isaiah 11:1-2).

Because Christ has come, 

because he has died for our sins,

 because he has risen from the dead, 

and because he is coming again, 

we have every reason to live now 

as if such peace and flourishing have already begun.

We have every reason to no longer “hurt or destroy.” 

For indeed, the whole earth, 

from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, 

is full of the knowledge of you, Lord. 

May we live and love today as if we really believe.

In Jesus’ peace-bringing name. Amen. 

Read Isaiah 11. 

*Quoted in Rankin Wilbourne’s excellent book Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God.