“The kingdom is God is in our midst.” Dallas Willard explains it like this, “The whole of reality is penetrated through and through by God. The kingdom of God is among us—a dynamic, unseen system of divine reality.” I believe that this invisible reality can be seen and experienced, but we must pay close attention.
Many years ago, I had a profound encounter with this invisible reality. Jay and I were on our way to Birmingham, Alabama, for heart surgery for our infant son, Brock. We stopped at McDonald’s to get my daily Diet Coke. As I stood in line, there was a mom holding a child, and I asked how old her son was. She said he was eleven months old, and then I blurted out that we were taking our six-month-old for heart surgery. This perfect stranger responded that her son had Tetralogy of Fallot, and he had had a heart operation when he was six months old. In a state of disbelief, I shared that this was Brock’s condition as well.
Something was happening behind the scenes in this invisible reality to have me meet this mom in this McDonald’s line at this exact place at this exact point in time. While her son lived, our story took a very heartbreaking turn, and Brock died after surgery. With many years of hindsight, I am convinced that we encountered the presence of God in that conversation at McDonald’s. It was God’s way of letting us know that he saw us, he knew our struggle to come, and that he would be in our midst all along the way.