After another delayed flight and misplaced piece of luggage, we arrived home in the dark early morning hours. We were tired but, as always, glad to be home. That the trip home included airline logistical problems added a strange symmetry to our journey, but perhaps it was fitting.
We don’t always know what themes will develop on our journeys, even when they are planned around certain historical figures or events, and this one was no different. In retrospect it is clear this one was about evangelism and walls.
The historical figures we came across each day were like a dream team of disciple-makers: Patrick, Columba, Maughold, Aiden, and Cuthbert. King Jesus used Patrick to remake Ireland into Kingdom-territory, and then He did the same with Maghhold on the Isle of Man, Columba in Scotland, and Aiden and Cuthbert in Northeastern England.
Studying these Kingdom heroes seemed to inspire our group, as when Ann spoke to our taxi driver in Dublin about the Lord, and The Wife and I shared about the Lord with our taxi driver on the Isle of Man.
And then there were the walls. The first walls we saw were those in Londonderry, built in the early seventeenth century but becoming even more iconic during The Troubles of 1968-1972.
The most famous wall was Hadrian’s. As I mentioned in a post, walls are some of the best evidence we live in a fallen world. Walls are designed to keep people separated from one another. Emperor Hadrian built his wall in 122 A.D. after giving up on defeating the vicious pagan Picts in what is now Scotland.
Fittingly, Hadrian’s wall has been all but dismantled now, not just through the pillaging of people but through the presence of the gospel. The Romans could not tame the Picts so they built a wall. Columba introduced them to the gospel and there was no longer a need for a wall.
And then there were my shoes. My rubber soled, leather shoes, which had over the past fifteen years proven themselves practically indestructable. I had travelled the world in them: Israel, Istanbul, Athens, Aachen, Paris, London, Ireland, Iona, St. Andrews, Edinburgh. They had trod where people who changed the world had trod.
They were developing holes in the soles, although incredibly the leather was still like new. Like the incorrupt body of Cuthbert, they had refused to degrade. I had made the tentative decision this would be their last trip since the soles could no longer keep the water out, as was proven on my unsuccessful trek to Cuthbert’s Cave on Day 13.
So, I left the shoes in the room in our hotel when we left for the airport. Maybe it is my fascination with relics, but it was hard to leave them behind because they had literally been a part of me in so many fascinating places we had been.
Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff, nor a bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not even have two tunics apiece. “Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city. “And as for those who do not receive you, as you go out from that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.
Luke 9:3-5
I wish I could say my shoes were symbols of all the places I had shared the gospel. Sure, there were times, like in Maughold Village on the Isle of Man, but those times were far too few. Jesus said everywhere we go we take the kingdom of God. Luke 10:9
I realize now, I have been so busy trying to find the Kingdom history in the places we have been, I had forgotten to continue making it. I’m determined now to make my next pair of shoes mean something more. GS