11.4.2026

I’ve always liked Ernest Hemingway’s titles more than I’ve liked his actual writing. His stories leave me cold, but those titles . . .  For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, The Snows of Kilimanjaro . . . and my favorite is the title of his final memoir of life in Paris, A Moveable Feast. 

Now, in Christianity, a feast is a day set apart to celebrate an episode in the life of Christ or a core belief. A moveable feast refers to feast days that have variable dates. For example, Christmas Day is always December 25. That never changes. But the date of Pentecost isn’t fixed, it is moveable and the day we celebrate it depends on what date Easter falls. So Pentecost is called “a moveable feast.” 

Hemingway borrowed the term but tossed the original meaning aside. Instead of referring to religious celebrations, Hemingway used “moveable feast” for something you experience in life that stays with you forever. Specifically, he had the time he lived in Paris in mind. He once told  a friend, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” 

Thanks to Hemmingway, “a moveable feast”  has since come to refer to a memory or even a state of being that never leaves you.  Catch the whiff of a certain perfume or the aroma of frying bacon and you are transported. No matter where you lived, you could never lose a moveable feast. Just close your eyes and you are there. 

The Kingdom of God is a moveable feast.

Usually when we think of a kingdom, like the United Kingdom, we think of geography. The United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and northern Ireland. 

The Kingdom of God isn’t like that. The Kingdom of God is a moveable feast beyond time and beyond space.

I’ve experienced the Kingdom of God in some remarkable and unexpected places. 

I experienced it on a mountain on an island in Turkey. It was a festival and people from several different countries came there to have their prayers answered. This was my second experience there. A Muslim lady whom I had prayed for the previous year — yes, I prayed over her in English in the name of Jesus — had her prayer answered and she brought her family members to the festival and searched us out, hoping to experience the same thing again. It was a tourist area in a Muslim country but the Kingdom of God broke through. 

Several of us experienced it back in 2025 in a tiny church in Tralee in Ireland’s County Kerry. The service was opened by the blast of the same 250 year old cow horn that called the people together for worship  in the days of John Wesley. During communion, we had people who sang parts and in that tiny space it sounded like a massive choir! We started with “Let Us Break Bread Together,” then picked it up with “Blessed Assurance” before launching into “Be Thou My Vision,” an Irish hymn sung in an Irish church. 

The service was so moving that when someone opened a door and a breeze blew through the building my first thought was that it was the Holy Spirit! 

And it doesn’t have to be in a foreign country! I’ve experienced the Kingdom  of God in huge cathedrals, small black churches, campmeeting grounds, on creek banks and in hospital rooms. 

Kim recently experienced the kingdom at the check-in counter at the Huntsville Hospital diagnostic center. I experienced it some 20 years ago in my car with Nathan Rodriguez and Josh Bruce when “heaven came down.” It was just me and a couple of teenagers who loved Jesus praying together, and God showed up. I experience it every Friday at the Community Table. I experience it at Christ Church. 

The kingdom is where the king is. You don’t have to be in heaven to experience it. 

Paul makes this clear in his  letter to the Philippians. a little background: The ancient city of Rome was overcrowded and as soldiers retired from service, the last thing the emperor needed was for a bunch of aging soldiers to move into the capital city. Instead, they would establish colonies throughout the empire of these former soldiers, and they were expected to make the colonies “little Romes.” They brought Rome’s culture and politics. They were to consider their colony an extension of Rome. 

One of these colonies was Philippi. When Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, something he wanted them to understand was that as believers, they were to establish colonies of heaven, not Rome. Paul wrote, urging them to “live your life as a citizen worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27) because “Our citizenship is in heaven” (3:20). 

That’s true for us as well. It makes no difference where we live — it doesn’t even matter where we are at any given moment. Wherever we are is the Kingdom of God. You could even say that wherever we are, as children of God, as Christians, as saints of God, we bring heaven with us.

A moveable feast, not bound by space or time and its aroma stays with you forever. 

Blessings,
Pastor Terry

PS - Yes, the election was yesterday and yes, some folks are happy and other folks . . .  not so much. The pendulum swings right to left and, like it or not, will swing again. That’s why the message of my Pastor’s Note is so important: we are citizens of the Kingdom of God and God is on His throne. The Kingdom does not swing. Live as citizens of the Kingdom.