Breaking Old Cycles

I'm now in the St. Louis, Missouri area, becoming increasingly nervous and excited as I await the event of this evening. In a few hours I will make my way downtown to see the University of Missouri Tigers open the 2008 football season against the strong and vastly improved University of Illinois Fighting Illini. The pressure is always on the favored team, which is Missouri, especially when the other team wants to even the score from last year's match-up.

Regardless of the outcome of the game, this day I feel a sense of hopefulness from an odd source. We're in an election year in this nation. I'm a fiercely defiant independent voter. I feel that neither party hits the mark in addressing the needs of this nation and the world. However, the landscape of this year's presidential election is pretty impacting. History will be made, regardless of the outcome. Our country could have its first non-Caucasian president. We could have the first president from among the combatants in the Vietnam conflict. And, as of yesterday, we could have our first female vice-president. As I awoke this morning it occurred to me that it really wasn't that long ago that African-Americans and women could not vote, much less run for political office. And it definitely was not that long ago that the nation was trying hard to ignore and forget the dark cloud of the Vietnam era and those who served bravely within it.

Some say that life is cyclic, and nothing really changes. Different players, same script and stage...I hear this presumption a lot as I listen to pastors and leaders from various established Christian congregations. The same people always hold power in churches, they say. The same established procedures shoot down any needed changes. Congregations stay more focused on themselves than on those outside their walls. What goes around, comes around, and nothing changes.

I don't believe that. Seemingly insurmountable barriers do fall. New ground is plowed. Sometimes we who are Jesus-followers forget that we serve a God who makes all things new. During the persecution of Christians in the first century, God reminded a follower of Jesus named John that the same old powers of spirit-crushing, destroying, and death-dealing would not keep running their destructive cycles. God unveiled before John a vision of a new heaven and a new earth.

I'm not saying that this year's election with bring about the Kingdom of God...far from it. The best of human effort does not bring about that which comes from the hand of God alone. Still, it's symbolic of the fact that things do change. We're not bound by the same categories and constraints forever and ever. This is especially true under the Lordship of Jesus the Christ.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.