We can do so much even in the mundane things of life. As I have said before, simply walking the dogs can be part of our kingdom-building efforts. When I walk my dog twice daily, I pray for all my neighbours as I walk past their houses. It is likely that only in the next life will I learn if my hundreds of prayers did in fact help bring some of these folks into the kingdom. So even those walks with Jilly are not wasted. 

It may be hard for many Christians to believe that what seems to be a pretty mundane and routine life (going to work, feeding the kids, mowing the lawn, and so on) is not insignificant but part of a much larger and much grander story. The truth is, we all have a role to play in the divine metanarrative, and there are no little people (to use Francis Schaeffer’s phrase) when it comes to our involvement in the building of the kingdom.
When Jesus offered us his model prayer, he said this “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-10). That means you and I as God’s people all have a job to do as we seek to see his kingdom realised on earth. We each have a part in the divine play happening right here and right now on planet earth.
And a core part of that is simply being faithful – and obedient. Whatever it is that God has called us to do, we must do it diligently and faithfully – and leave the results up to God. This notion of simply obeying is a key part of our Christian walk and serving the Lord.
It was certainly a major theme in the writings – both fiction and non-fiction – of the notable Scottish pastor and author George MacDonald. Those who do not know much about him are urged to have a read of this introductory piece: 
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/02/04/notable-christians-george-macdonald/
MacDonald has a huge influence on another very important Christian writer and thinker: C. S. Lewis. Here I want to tie all these things together: our role in the divine story; the importance of obedience; and the thoughts of Lewis and MacDonald.
And I will do it by following up on a piece I penned yesterday on the Second Coming of Christ and what Lewis had to say about it. His 1952 essay “The Christian Hope – Its Meaning for Today” was published as “The World’s Last Night”. See my discussion of this important piece here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/06/02/c-s-lewis-on-the-second-coming/
As to the matter of obedience, sure enough, Lewis manages to fit in a George MacDonald quote in his short piece. Lewis talks about those who – like William Miller – foolishly set dates for the Lord’s return, only to be proven spectacularly wrong. Says Lewis:
“Of this folly George MacDonald has written well, ‘Do those,’ he asks, ‘who say, Lo here or lo there are the signs of His coming, think to be too keen for Him and spy His approach? When He tells them to watch lest He find them neglecting their work, they stare this way and that, and watch lest He should succeed in coming like a thief! Obedience is the one key of life’.”
As to this idea that we are all players in the divine drama being acted out here on earth, I quoted some of what Lewis had to say in my previous article. Here I want to offer more of his very helpful thoughts. He discusses this in the context of refuting the modern notion of progress. He says it is clearly not the case “that there is any law of progress in ethical, cultural, and social history.” He goes on to say this:
The idea which here shuts out the Second Coming from our minds, the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection, is a myth, not a generalization from experience. And it is a myth which distracts us from our real duties and our real interest. It is our attempt to guess the plot of a drama in which we are the characters. But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are ‘on’ concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.
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What does the leadership of these nations consider to be their nations’ highest values? The goals to which they aspire? In France, as in so much of the West, the general answer is: inversion, which is what critical-theory academics mean when they speak of “queering” something. It means to turn the meaning of something inside-out, as our governing and cultural elites have done to our civilization’s values. We are told that we must be diverse, which means punishing those who hold non-progressive views.

The International Olympics Committee is in full-on damage control over its blasphemous Paris opening ceremony show. The IOC has apologized for the event, and deleted it from its YouTube channel. These elites would like everyone to forget what a global television audience saw last Friday: a filthy mockery of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, featuring drag queens as the disciples, and Barbara Butch, an obese lesbian DJ, as Our Lord. 
“Oh yes! Oh yes! The New Gay Testament!” Butch later messaged on Instagram. Underscoring the point, that tableau vivant was titled, in punning French, La Cène Sur Un Scène Sur La Seine – that is, The Last Supper Staged On The Seine.
The satanic parody feast featured as its blasphemous Eucharist a priapic Smurf meant to represent Dionysius—perhaps a sneering, obscene reference to St. Denis (a Gallicized version of “Dionysius”), the third-century martyr who is a patron saint of Paris. According to a tumescent Associated Press account of the event, the Greek god of wine pointed to his penis and sang, in French, “Where to hide a revolver when you’re completely naked?”
Thomas Jolly, the gay French theatrical director who conceived this vulgar abomination, said, “My wish isn’t to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock. Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.”
There are people stupid enough to believe that. But even the leader of France’s far left, the anti-clerical Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is not one of them. In a blog post, Mélenchon condemned the revolting event as shaming the nation. 
“We were speaking to the world that evening,” Mélenchon wrote. “Among the billion Christians in the world, how many good and honest people are there for whom faith provides help in living and knowing how to participate in everyone’s life, without bothering anyone?” 
Jolly rogered the good faith of Christians the world over, and knew exactly what he was doing. So too did everyone at the IOC and in the French government who approved this thing. It is impossible to believe that this trashy LGBT mockery of Christianity didn’t get a sign-off at the highest level. This was Paris’s chance to present itself to the world, and they wouldn’t dare leave anything to chance. 
What the world saw was a transgressive homosexual romp and stomp across what Christians hold sacred. France’s elites signaled to the planet that it sacralizes homosexuality, transgenderism, sexual excess, and blasphemy. The Paris Olympics overture was a floor show for the Antichrist. 
As many commenters noted, these oh-so-courageous would never do this to Muslims. Nor should they, I hasten to say! It’s just that France is deep into a culture war between Islam and secularism that will determine the country’s future. For years now, many authorities have warned that the struggle could easily tip over into a civil war. And yet, these decadent French elites are determined to hasten the destruction of Western civilization. Decades ago, the lesbian cultural critic Camille Paglia warned her fellow homosexuals against reckless attacks on religion. Homosexuality only flourishes under conditions of advanced culture, she said—and like it or not, the church is a pillar of culture. Therefore, said Paglia, when gays “attack the institutions of culture (including religion), they are sabotaging their own future.”
In 2016, Paglia spoke at an ideas festival in Britain, saying that the West’s obsession with androgyny and transgenderism is a sign that “civilization is starting to unravel. You find it again and again and again in history.” 
“People who live in such times feel that they’re very sophisticated, they’re very cosmopolitan,” Paglia said. In truth, she goes on, they give evidence of a culture that no longer believes in itself. This, in turn, calls forth “people who are convinced of the power of heroic masculinity”—in other words, barbarians. 
Nobody will resist contemporary “barbarians” to defend a civilizational order that places the sexually disordered at its symbolic pinnacle.
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Earlier this month, the SJC’s ruling was sent to the parties. TE Stephen O’Neill was one of the faithful elders who helped present the case of RPR before the SJC and he joined the podcast to discuss the ruling of the General Assembly in this matter. The SJC is to be commended for its work on this case. The SJC clearly performed a thorough analysis of what MNY presbytery has both done and left undone. The Commission expressed awareness of steps taken already by MNY presbytery to correct the delinquencies in this matter. But the SJC also noted what the MNY presbytery has done so far is “clearly inadequate.”

On “Reformation Sunday” in 2021 a priestess in The Episcopal Church took the pulpit at Trinity PCA in Rye, New York where Craig Higgins serves as senior pastor. The lady paused after reading a portion of Scripture and promising to return to read the rest of the pericope at the end of her “teaching,” she said with a smile.
She went on “teaching” for quite some time. She talked about sin and the grace of God, she warned about self-righteousness and resentment, she asserted American Christians should pay more attention to the teachings of the “Calvinist theologian Karl Barth,” lamenting that Barth’s theology has not caught on in American Churches, and she extolled the freedom that is found in Christ alone to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
News of what had taken place at Trinity PCA in Rye, NY scandalized many in the PCA.
When a ruling elder from another presbytery raised questions as to how such a thing could be done in a PCA Congregation, the Metro New York Presbytery (MNY) investigated. The representatives of the Session and TE Higgins asserted they take no exceptions to the relevant portions of the standards related to whether a woman may preach in public worship. The presbytery then closed the investigation without finding any basis for charges.
When the Review of Presbytery Records Committee (RPR) of General Assembly examined the Minutes of MNY on this matter, many members of RPR were puzzled as to how MNY arrived at its conclusions. Accordingly and with only one dissenting vote, RPR recommended the matter be referred to the General Assembly’s Standing Judicial Commission, since there appeared to be particularly glaring violations of the PCA Constitution in this case.
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