the magic kingdom

Why al memlekah? Its Arabic for "the Kingdom" which is the focal point of this blog. Why Arabic over hebrew? well, what first came to mind when I thought about blogging my study of the Kingdom of God was "mustard seed" but that name was already taken by somebody blogging about sustainability or poetry, something like that. The next name that came to mind was al memlekah, which I will forever associate with Paul Oakenfield's "dead can dance" song because of the movie "the Kingdom" about an FBI team's time in Saudi Arabia.

That movie was so fascinating to me since I had been to Saudi Arabia, a place we call in my line of work "the magic kingdom" as things are not always as one would think in the Kingdom. I thought the trailer for the movie was pretty bitchin and since I was in arabic class at the time, al Memlekah immediately popped into my head whenever i saw the trailer.

For some reason, hamamlakah - the hebrew version of the kingdom is not as strong as al memlekah. or at least for me the connotations are not as strong. the arabic, with its thoughts of the Saudi desert passing underneath my airplane, or the camels wandering on the white sand, or that time i at dominos pizza surrounded by bikini clad saudi women at the beach club seem a great intro to my study of the kingdom of God, which I feel in many ways is not going to match all my preconceived notions of what the Kingdom of God is and when will it come, or at least the notion may continue to do the mind warp that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to do to me. At the very least using the arabic and talking about Saudi Arabia means I can post some of my pics, with the caveat that one is not allowed to take pixs in al memlekah so don't turn me in to any religious police you may know!

Another note on language and word usage, I am going to use Jesus' Hebrew name, Yeshua, because I like it better.