The kingdom of heaven. Now that’s a big concept. Not a week goes by without Christ Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven meaning more to me. Each one is rich and relevant, and so applicable to life. Did Jesus share parables about other concepts? He did. But that’s another article!

Christ Jesus preached the good news that the kingdom of heaven is now, is here—not way up in the sky or waiting in the hereafter. “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” the master Christian said (Luke 17:21). To describe this kingdom to the multitudes, he used several parables. 

One I’ve found particularly intriguing is this one: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field” (Matthew 13:44).

I got it—how precious the treasure was to this man. He was happy to have found it, but I couldn’t help wondering, Why did he buy the whole field? Why didn’t he just take the treasure and leave? What does the field symbolize, anyway? 

First of all, I’ve applied this parable to how any sincere seeker may approach spiritual growth. 

I see the treasure the man found in the field as some clear glimpse of the kingdom of heaven—tangible evidence of the healing Christ. This glimpse was so pure, so sure, that the man had to learn more of the whole truth behind Christ’s teachings that gave him that kingdom of heaven experience. Also, not a single such moment can exist without the field, its home—the allness, everywhereness, and goodness of God and God’s laws, the divine Science of being. That man must’ve seen this, because he hid his treasure (kept it in consciousness to preserve it, making it his own), then sold everything and bought the whole field. So precious was the part of this divine Science he’d already seen, he wanted and knew he needed to embrace all of it—the whole realm of God’s goodness and power. 

Being one entire whole, God’s kingdom surely can’t be separated from its purity, its sufficiency from its spirituality, its harmony from its wholeness, or its valuableness from its invariability. This whole field, or entirety of God’s kingdom, includes the realm of divine Love’s fullness and freshness, vastness and vitality, rudiments and rules, requirements and rewards, blessedness and bounty, truths and triumphs. So when Jesus says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33), doesn’t that imply buying the whole field? 

The entirety of God’s kingdom includes all of divine Love’s fullness and freshness.

Here’s how the bigness of this parable began to inspire me. Shortly after I first wondered “Why buy the field?” our son had a healing of a condition deemed medically incurable (see my testimony in the July 15, 1996, Sentinel, and the News of Healing podcast “Impressed by disease? Don’t be,” April 30, 2014). My husband and I had no doubt that God had healed our son, but I needed to understand how, so I could help others. Looking back on this now, I see that, as with the man in the parable, the kingdom of heaven glimpse I’d had with our son’s healing was what was impelling my wanting and needing the whole field. Thus began an insatiable hunger to learn more of Christian Science and more about its Discoverer, Mary Baker Eddy. 

Reading a biography of Mary Baker Eddy, I cherished her devotion to God. So important was her first healing glimpse of the kingdom of heaven that she committed her life to this Science—healing, teaching, and giving this Science to the world in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She gave her all for it. That’s really “buying the field,” wouldn’t you say! Her spiritual definition of kingdom of heaven (which was gleaned from the Bible) is given in the Glossary of Science and Health, and it speaks to me of the whole field—of God’s allness demonstrated. Here’s the definition: “The reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme” (p. 590).

I’m learning that God’s grace, His unstoppable love for His children, not only opens our hearts and thoughts to receive His Christ, it also inspires our wanting and buying the whole field. For me, buying it includes a willingness to not give in to resistance that tries to hinder, hamper, or hide our full responsiveness within us to the allness of God’s goodness and the goodness of God’s allness. Buying the field takes God-enlightened alertness and God-empowered obedience. And we have both, I find, as we consistently enthrone in consciousness those spiritual qualities that comprise God’s kingdom, His reign. As Science and Health puts it, “Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love—the kingdom of heaven—reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear” (p. 248).

Jesus’ plain-spoken parables help readers in  profoundly practical ways.

Loving and living these attributes and letting them reign in our thinking activates them in our words and actions and demonstrates His reign, or God-in-control, within us. He meets our needs, protecting us and nurturing our innate desire for the whole kingdom—God’s demands, not just our wants; His chastening, not just His cherishing; His correcting, not just His comforting; His purifying, not just His pardon; His holiness, not just His help; His stirring and spiritualizing our thought, not just soothing it. 

The tempter (devil, Satan, serpent, liar—whatever you call the claim of a power opposed to God, good)—appears to operate in sneaky ways, and the more earnest our desire to learn of the kingdom of heaven and be governed by it, the more it can sometimes seem that we are deterred. The tempter’s silent mental suggestions are often so subtle that we may unwittingly accept them as our own thoughts—thoughts that deny the kingdom of heaven within us and put off our spiritual growth for another day. But when we’re awake and alive to the kingdom of heaven and the spiritual qualities that are ours as God’s children, we detect the liar’s deceptive and flimsy suggestions and are not taken in by them. We realize they have no mind, reality, or power.

There is great joy and reward in embracing the knowledge that the kingdom of heaven, God’s reign, rules within us—and great joy in proving it. Yes, Jesus’ plain-spoken parables, always available to humanity, help readers in profoundly practical ways.