Knees and the Kingdom of God

  As a veteran of three knee surgeries who loves running, I have a bit of a conflict.  Going out and pounding the pavement for hours on end will only cause more pain, but I miss running.  In hopes of settling this dilemma, I bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers last year.  The idea of the shoe is to provide zero padding and mold to the foot in hopes of encouraging the runner to run as though they had no shoes on.  (I hear you asking:  Well, then why buy the shoe at all?  The FiveFinger provides minimal rubber isolation from sticks and stones and other things that may well break my bones.  I'd like to avoid that.)  Some people believe that running barefoot will help protect the body from chronic injuries--the theory is that God designed the body to run a certain way, and the padding in modern shoes changes the way we run, leading to injuries.  I don't think barefoot running is for everyone, but I wanted to give it a try.

  In summary, barefoot running is trying to take us back to the way we ran without shoes, when we were barefoot and free from the shoe technology that is *supposed* to make us run better.  The struggle is that it takes a lot of work to go back to the way we ran as children, with barefeet, the feel of the soft summer grass carrying us forward as we ran with unrestrained glee in our hearts.

  In many ways, we can't go back to the way we were.  Perhaps my FiveFingers will help me imitate the way I ran as a child, but I can't truly go back.

  The church is the same way.  It can't go back.

  Many people want the church to go back.  They long to return to 'the good old days', when everyone went to church on Sunday morning and stores were closed and they returned home to a long luncheon and Sunday afternoons on the front porch.  We want to go back to the days when the hallways were filled and each classroom was filled with a different group studying together.  We want to go back to the days when the offering overflowed and the pews were filled and everyone knew exactly which church stood for what principle.  We want to go back.

  We can't go back.

  And I believe that's a good thing.

  We can't go back any more than Adam and Eve could retreat back into the Garden of Eden, slipping beneath the watchful gaze of the cherubim stationed at entrance.  Adam and Eve may have longed for the sinless days of the Garden, but they couldn't go back.  All that was left for them was to accept their rebuke and move forward, setting their backs to the days of the Garden and seeking to live with the new constraints that were placed upon them.  Life would never be the same.

  But that doesn't mean that life can't be good.  It doesn't mean that life couldn't be faithful and fruitful and joyous--it just meant that life would be different.

  I believe the same is true for the church.  We'll never go back to the old days, but that doesn't mean that the days ahead aren't filled with wondrous possibility.  It doesn't mean that we can't be just as faithful and grow in new and joyous ways.  It doesn't mean that the classrooms can't be filled once more, that the pews won't overflow.

  It simply means that it will be different.  It may look a little different, feel a little different, but that's because it will be different.  It's different because we grow as people, as a congregation, and God does new things in our life each day, calls us to live in new ways--just as faithful, but new.  We have to be willing to adapt, as hard as it may be.  We have to be willing to grow, and accept that while we may not know the answers, we trust that each step will be taken in faithfulness, and that God will use our humble efforts.

  So we can't go back.  As individuals we can't go back to the innocence we had as children, and as congregations we can't necessarily recapture the same life we had in our best times.  But that doesn't mean God doesn't have something wonderful in store for us.  It simply means that we have to trust the God in whose hands our futures lie.  We have to trust that the City of Light that God has prepared for us at the end of our days is more rich and wondrous then we can imagine.  We have to trust that God has something good in store, something that we cannot anticipate.

  Humanity had to turn its back on the Garden of Eden.  But all the while, God is preparing a place for us--a new heaven and a new earth, with a river filled with the water of life, where the Lamb will sit on the throne and the tree of life will stand tall.  As a people, we move from the Garden at the beginning to the city at the end.  Going back isn't the faithful way--we go forward, into the future God has prepared for us.