Lately I’ve been looking for angels, the humanoid kind who sometimes pass by unnoticed on the street. It keeps me from becoming cynical after being serially ignored by store clerks, or walking the entire distance into town without so much as making eye-contact with a single person. So I look for angels. Yesterday they showed up in the form of ten-year old neighbors Adis and Amir, who raced down the street to practice their English on me. Just now it was the waiter at the Bill Gates Cafe who looked me in the eye, greeted me, and asked if I wanted “an Orangina like yesterday?” You probably have to live here to truely value these small angel-sightings.

Cynicism can be a temptation for me and a particularly un-Jesus-like trait. From my reading of the gospels, our Servant-King / Savior had a wonderful gift for optimism, hope and promise. His kingdom-eyes didn’t deny the darkness, but saw through it.

But there’s no denying I’m a product of brooding, pessimistic American Evangelicalism. Awhile back I had a conversation with an American friend who wanted to discredit the present / future kingdom of God on the grounds that the world was destined to become “more and more evil” until eventually Jesus would be oblidged to rapture us all out of the mess. We American Evangelicals have become practiced at gleefully asserting, “See there!? Wars! Earthquakes! Famine!! Surely it’s time for Jesus to return!!” But therein we miss the kingdom.

“Jesus told them another parable: “The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man sowed good seed in his field. One night, when everyone was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. When the plants grew and the heads of grain began to form, then the weeds showed up. The man’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, it was good seed you sowed in your field; where did the weeds come from?’ ‘It was some enemy who did this,’ he answered. ‘Do you want us to go and pull up the weeds?’ they asked him. ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because as you gather the weeds you might pull up some of the wheat along with them. Let the wheat and the weeds both grow together until harvest. Then I will tell the harvest workers to pull up the weeds first,tie them in bundles and burn them, and then to gather in the wheat and put it in my barn.’ ” (Matthew 13:24-30)

Did you catch that? The rich, golden wheat of the Kingdom grows ALONGSIDE the tares. Of course there will be death, destruction and evil. Yet the promise remains that “the light will shine in the darkness”, ” nations will come to the glory”, “the tares will be removed from the WHEAT”, and “the kingdom will be established.”