Kingdom not limited

Friday February 8^th, Luke 4:  24 "I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian." Limited views of the Kingdom allow us to believe that the Kingdom is only for us, or those who believe like us.  Mold breaking is hard, and painful.  Nazareth was a small Jewish community in the midst of a diverse Galilee and close to the very cosmopolitan Zippori (Sepphoris).  Nazareth was this nice little pure town.  Now we find that Jesus, after introducing jubilee language, drives the thorn deeper by using examples of the wideness of God’s mercy to show that maybe there is something beyond their narrow fundamentalists view of the world and God’s role in it.    Have you had a time when you had to break your preconceived ideas of another?  Was it painful?  Was it best in hindsight?  The Kingdom of God is not limited, it is open to all.  God created all and called it good.  We on the other hand are still working on accepting that one.  For help you might try signing the Charter for Compassion.  (http://charterforcompassion.org/)