Posted on: 5th October 2022

Can you measure out a kilogram of flour with a ruler? Can you measure the length of a swimming pool with some scales? Let me take you to one of Zechariah’s visions: 

Then I looked up, and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand. I asked, “Where are you going?” 
He answered me, “To measure Jerusalem, to find out how wide and how long it is.”
While the angel who was speaking to me was leaving, another angel came to meet him and said to him: “Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it. And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will be its glory within.’ (Zechariah 2:1-5)

The man was trying to use a physical, earthy object to measure God’s Kingdom. However, the important thing was not to measure the size of Jerusalem, but to consider the fact that God himself will be the walls protecting it and God will be within it. Because the walls are made of fire, it can grow and change and expand according to where God wants to move. I wonder if we sometimes come to God’s Kingdom with a big measuring stick and box it into tidy buildings and labels and Sunday mornings. But the Kingdom of God is not something you can box in. It’s wild and growing and often different from what we expect.

For the man with the measuring line, Jerusalem was so much bigger than he could even begin to comprehend in that moment. Maybe ask God where your dreams are too small compared to what He has in mind. The fact that we can’t measure the Kingdom with earthly guides also means that small in the Kingdom does not mean insignificant. Ask God where you might be disregarding the small beginnings, the one-to-one conversations, or the living room gatherings.

So let’s not measure the things of the Kingdom with earthly guides. Let’s widen our expectations of God and tune in to where He is moving in this time.

Mary Swain – Dayspring Church