As an American tourist, it doesn’t take long to be struck by the vast history of Britain. The British museum, built to house the collected relics from the empire was opened to the public before America was even a country. The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s cathedral have seen coronations, births, daily living, executions, weddings, and burials for a thousand years. Today was our last day and we visited the ruins of the Roman Wall which marked the original boundary of Londinium in 40 AD. A two thousand year old wall.
As Kylie and I are entering this season of traveling, we are trying very hard to see the Kingdom of God in each place, in each day, in each moment. The World Race has taught us so much about appreciating the kingdom of God around us, not relying on our circumstances or community to point it out for us. There is good in the world, there is evil, and there is indifference. And I believe that to a large degree, you will find whichever you are seeking. Tourism isn’t an excuse to take a break from life, after all. The process of discipleship, the struggle for holy perspective is an all-the-time process. And we have become a bit addicted.
The thing London has shown me about the kingdom of God is the beauty of tradition, unity, and consistency. I’ll never forget our first day here in London. We went to St. Paul’s cathedral and spent about three hours slowly exploring the inside. A few minutes after we got there, a clergyman came out and asked all the tourists to still and be quiet. He explained that every hour, they ask the tourist to stop and they take a quick minute to pray. We did so. Our own little Selah. And when he invited us to pray The Lord’s Prayer, I admit that my eyes welled up pretty vigorously. Here I was, saying the Lord’s Prayer in a place of worship wherein such words have been proclaimed for thousands of years.
As our voices echoed through the corridors, I felt pretty insignificant and pretty included, a very tiny part of a gigantic whole. The weight of church tradition hit me pretty hard that day (and the next day when they did the same thing at Westminster Abbey).
We tend to be pretty dismissal of the past. Probably because the past is so full of hurts for most of us. This is true for the church as well. We give a lot of credence to looking forward. It is a virtue to gaze at the future and distraction to gaze too much into the past. But our past helps identify us. Even in its tumult, it is beautiful and sacred.
The present is like a balance beam and we must be limber gymnast, feeling the true weight of the past and the equal mass of the future, but always, always keeping our eyes straight ahead. And relentlessly moving forward. Throwing all our attention to the past (or the future) will render us unstable and fling us from the beam. Our present is the balance of both what we have been and what we might be. The future and the past are silent weights, always felt, always a strange part of the present, but never quite real enough to be worthy of our full vision.
No other country in the world has carried tradition throughout the years as well as Great Britain. Through the fires and the civil war and the plague and the revolts and the reformation, it has held firmly to a sense of tradition and togetherness. Being tethered to something in the midst of tempest is at the heart of identity. And although they can’t quite put it into words, although it is weird and sometimes imperfect, Britain knows who she is. Perhaps this is why so many great writers have come from this area. I’ve always thought that pinpointing immoveable truths in an ever-changing world is part of the writer’s noble task. And Britain has trained its people to be so.
It is beautifully proper that we should start our journey through Europe here in London. We are striving to be consistent people, to have that ineffable spirit of togetherness at work within ourselves. As we come and as we go, we strive to always be people, coronated and crowned into the timeless lineage of the Kingdom of Heaven.
