Understanding

Sometimes as we read the stories and conversations from the life of Jesus we are inclined to think how slow and dense these people around Jesus were.

We read of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. How dense Nicodemus seems. "Can a man enter his mother's womb a second time?" Jesus had to explain it over and over again, trying every metaphor he could come up with.

In two scenes set right next to one another, Peter first proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah and then, when Jesus in the next scene begins to expain what that means, Peter say oh no Lord that will never happen to you.

James and John send their mother in to Jesus to ask if they may sit on his right and left hands when he comes into his kingdom. We cringe and think, "oh no guys don't ask for that."

But do we understand any better what God's kingdom is about? Notice the questions is not would we have understood better had we been there? The question is even having the advantage of knowing the whole story of Jesus' life and 21 centuries of study and thought, do we come any closer to understanding to what Jesus calls us? Or what living in God's kingdom means?