The Story of “The Kingdom Is Close”

There are two ways to drive from Denver to Phoenix.

The first is to start west. You follow interstate 70 as it carves through the Rockies. It’s a wonderful drive, but steep, and in the winter there’s snow. It’s dicier than you might expect a major highway to be, especially if you happen to drive a 2004 Toyota Corrolla with front-wheel drive. When (if) you make it to Grand Junction, you head down toward the valley.

The second way is to drive south from Denver to Albuquerque, and from there west toward Flagstaff. You avoid most of the mountains and snow this way. You avoid most of everything, really, except for the New Mexican desert where Breaking Bad was filmed.

Alli and I have taken the second way twice.

Both times we did it for Christmas. We broke the drive up into two days, spending Christmas Eve in Albuquerque, then waking up to take interstate 40 west. Between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, the highway bulldozes its way across high-elevation deserts through reservation land. It’s a red, edgeless place, free like the wind and crushed like an old Coke can. The mile markers are run-down casinos and gas stations shaped like teepees. Eventually, Humphreys Peak rises above the western horizon like a towering, 12,000-foot signpost for a ski resort. Then you reenter the world of trees and Starbucks and unstoppable condo developments.

In between is a stretch of the world that’s on the way to other places. Only the tractor trailers stop. I imagine it feels lonely most of the year, but on Christmas morning it feels post-apocalyptic.

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

So says Abraham Kuyper, whom I can only name after Googling that quote. You can hear the certainty in his voice.

On one hand, I believe what he says with all my heart. The depths of the earth and the mountain peaks belong to God. I figure the burned-out desert probably does, too.

On the other hand, it’s hard to picture Jesus of Nazareth crying “Mine!” over anything. Didn’t he make himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant, being obedient to death? Doesn’t he invite us to follow him? When he cries “Mine!” does he pound the table like a toddler? Do his eyes bulge from his head like the seagulls from Finding Nemo?

If all the earth belongs to Christ, why are so many square inches of it pocked with signs for old slot machines?

It was Christmas.

We stopped to pee at the grimy-floored gas station shaped like a teepee four hours from Phoenix. They were playing Christmas music. I walked outside and put my back to the broken metal sounds of the highway, then looked out over the wide circle of desert. There was nothing – only brown sand and blue sky and a faded mobile home with a Ford out front and a German shepherd asleep on the porch.

Muted snatches of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” drifted from the gas station. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

“Even here?” I asked. The German shepherd raised its head.

We climbed back in the car. We made it to Phoenix. A little while later, I wrote this song.

The Kingdom Is Close

Driving west
Running clean
Past the washed-out billboards
For the slot machines
In the dark casinos
Where the books are clear
If the world was ending
Could you tell from here?

You can run from heaven
But you can’t escape
Every exit ramp goes
To a holy place
If the bush was burning
Would you kneel down
Would you take your shoes off
Or would you put it out?

I want to know
What it’s like to be someone
Who sees skin on dry bones
What it’s like when
The kingdom’s close

I’m a new moon rising
In a blacked out sky
I’m a closed-up strip mall
Another waste of time
But I’ve been running from heaven
And I can’t escape
I’ve been burning mercies
But they’re new each day

I want to know
What it’s like to be someone
Someone
Someone
I want to know
What it’s like to be someone
Who sees skin on dry bones
What it’s like when
The kingdom’s close