“Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21). If it's true that the Kingdom of God is within us, then we have to do all that we can to expand the borders of the kingdom outside of ourselves. “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19). As we bind ourselves to each other with covenant ordinances and less formally but no less powerfully with the bonds of charity, we open the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven that is within us and create connections to the parts of the Kingdom of God that were locked away in the hearts of our brothers and sisters to which we have now been bound. The more people around us with whom we are able to cultivate genuine ties of love and fellowship and service, the more that the Kingdom of God will cease to be confined inside of us but will expand outwards to occupy all of the space between us and those to whose hearts our hearts have become knit together in love. Person to person, neighborhood to neighborhood, community to community, nation to nation, the Kingdom of God will roll forth like a stone cut out of the mountains without hands from within the hearts of everyone committed to building up and out the Kingdom until it has filled the whole Earth.
