The Parable of the Open-Mic Night

The kingdom of God is like an open mic night that accidentally started in a funeral home.

No one planned it.
Someone forgot to lock the door.
Someone else turned on the lights.

People wandered in assuming there must be rules.
Who goes first.
Who’s allowed on stage
What counts as acceptable material.
Someone asked where to sign up.

There was no clipboard.
No host with a plan.
Just a microphone that worked when it felt like it
and a guy in the back who kept saying,
“Well… go on, then.”

The first person up didn’t tell a joke.
He told the truth.
About how his marriage ended.
About how faith didn’t fix it.
About how tired he was of pretending it should have.

Then someone laughed—not because it was funny,
but because it was honest.

A woman went next.
She started with a joke she’d heard before,
forgot the punchline halfway through,
and finished by crying.
No one stopped her.
No one corrected her.
Someone handed her a napkin like it was the most normal thing in the world.

After that, all bets were off.
The clever stopped being clever.
The polished forgot their lines.
The desperate relaxed.
Confessions arrived disguised as humor.
Laughter slipped in where dignity used to sit.

Someone asked,
“Is this allowed?”

And someone else said,
“Well… it’s happening.”

No one left saying,
“That really clarified things.”
Or,
“I finally got my life together.”

They left saying,
“I thought I was the only one.”
“I didn’t know you could say that out loud.”
“I feel lighter—and I don’t know why.”

That’s the lark of grace.
God’s quiet joke on the rules we made for Him,
and the seriousness we used to defend them.

Religion would have shut it down.
Scheduled it properly.
Added guidelines.
Called it “unsafe.”

Grace let it run long.
Let it get awkward.

Because grace doesn’t restore order.
It exposes the lie that order was ever the point.

The kingdom of God isn’t a courtroom,
It’s the moment everyone realizes
they’ve been improvising the whole time—
and that God has been on stage with them,
not judging the act,
but sharing the mic.

Blessed are the ones who stop demanding the resolution
and finally laugh at the freedom
that was there the whole time.