Headed in the Right Direction

The pastor of a large urban parish did a TV series called “The Kingdom of God.” Each week on the morning after the show aired he would visit sick parishioners in the hospital. On one such visit, he received an unusually enthusiastic greeting from a man who had been hospitalized for weeks. Said the patient, “You’ll be glad to know that we all watched your program last night. There was only one TV available in the ward, so we had to decide by majority vote what programs we would watch. During your time-slot, it came down to ‘The Kingdom of God,’ or ‘American Idol.’ You won by one vote.” Said the pastor later, “I thought to myself that when we can beat ‘American Idol’ with ‘The kingdom of God’ at, last, we’re headed in the right direction!”

“Don’t ask me about what was, but what is to come,” the Apostle Peter told the early Christians. He was pointing them in the direction of the coming…