What is: The Kingdom of God

Matthew 6:33 (NASB)
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

I have recited this verse since I was a kid - it is familiar, maybe too familiar. As I thought about it again, I began to really ask, what is the kingdom of God?

Mark 4:26-20 (NASB)
26 And He was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; 27 and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows-- how, he himself does not know. 28 "The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. 29 "But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

Mark 4:30-32 (NASB)
30 And He said, "How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it? 31 "It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, 32 yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR can NEST UNDER ITS SHADE."

Luke 13:20-21 (NASB)
20 And again He said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 "It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened."

These passages point to the kingdom of God as a growing harvest: it never occurred to me. The kingdom of God is the sovereign reign of our Heavenly God, the King. It is a kingdom that is both now and not yet. But when Matthew, Mark and Luke describes it, they refer to it as a growing and enlarging realm. Would it then be logical that to seek first His kingdom is missiological in essence?

pearlie