God's Ecology of Failure and Success

We very often just don't get it, or get Him.  The Kingdom of God just doesn't operate like we would expect.  And why would we think otherwise?  Isaiah quoted God saying, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways."  The Lord told Samuel, "...The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."  Paul tells us that our ways are so diametrically opposed to God's that what we consider strength he considers weakness and what we consider weakness he considers strength.  Furthermore, in his inaugration speech as the leader of the KIngdom of God on earth, Jesus describes the Kingdom as a place where the exemplary citizens are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, and the hungry that are being filled and enriched.

Failure and success, one a great fear and the other the framework for our dream, are something else to God.  Those of us who take the Kingdom of God on this earth as an invitation that paves the way to the Kingdom of God in heaven are in the process of seeing things as God sees them and learning to live in his way.  For us God's Ecology of Failure and Success is a hunger that is being filled.