The following passage is the prophet Isaiah\u2019s description of what God\u2019s kingdom will look like.\u00a0 This statement of hope makes very clear what all those who pray \u201cthy kingdom come\u201d should demand of their elected officials.\u00a0 The policy implications of this vision are obvious, and the contrast between the depiction of God\u2019s Holy Mountain and the \u201ckingdom\u201d that our own institutions perpetuate is damning.<\/p>\n
\u201cBehold, I will create new heavens and a new earth\u2026Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years\u2026they will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands.\u00a0 They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD\u2026the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox\u2026they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,\u201d says the LORD.\u201d (Is. 65:17-25)<\/em><\/p>\n Let us consider that in the United States, 1 in 5 Americans with a full-time job is paid so little that\u2013even with both parents working\u2013their family still lives in poverty.<\/p>\n Thirty-five million Americans are so poor that at least once a month they cannot afford to buy food.\u00a0 Of those 35 million people, over 13 million are children.\u00a0 Put another way, just shy of 1 in 5 children in this country have parents who regularly have to face the soul-crushing reality that they will be sending their child to bed hungry because they cannot afford groceries.\u00a0 Before Obamacare, over 9 million children in this country had no health insurance.<\/p>\n Some may say that Isaiah\u2019s vision of the Kingdom of God is a pipedream completely out of our grasp this side of the grave. \u00a0But is a world where children and the elderly do not die before their time because they lack access to basic medicine and health care; a world where workers fully share in the fruits of their labor so that they can live with dignity and without worry that their families will go homeless and their children hungry; a world where a child\u2019s future is not determined by what side of the tracks or equator he is born on; a world where peace and hope reign\u2026is such a world truly beyond our grasp, an ideal that can be brought about only through miraculous, divine intervention?<\/p>\n \n<\/p>