04.03 | The Playground & the Picnic
Romans 9:30-10:21
‘For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.’
Romans 10:4
When I was four years old, I got lost in the woods.
We were sharing a holiday with another family in central Wales, and we were out on a walk. The grown ups were together, talking as grown ups do, and I was with the other kids. Nearing lunchtime, we reached a point where the path forked into two. My older sister wanted to go one way, but I wanted to go the other. My way looked more fun—more adventurous and rambly. But the other way was actually the way to the playground, where we would stop for our picnic. So off she went, the other kids in tow (kids still follow her today), and I, feeling stubborn and hangry, took the other path.
It didn’t take too long to realise I’d made a big mistake.
I wandered in those woods for about an hour. I remember the powerful feelings of anxiety and disorientation, helplessly uncertain of how to find everyone again.
Eventually, I heard the sound my dad, calling through the trees. I remember this part clearly. And, seeing him coming down a leafy slope, he rushed over, both of us emotional and both deeply relieved. He scooped me up into a fatherly bear hug, and all was well. We went to the playground to join in the picnic.
Two paths. One led to the playground, one to being utterly lost.
My mistake?
I’d focused on the path, rather than the destination.
Again, today, Paul wants to help us understand how this story of Jesus of Nazareth comes out of the backstory of the Old Testament story. It’s one story. Specifically, he wants to discuss the Law—the code of of wholeness and truth, stewarded by the Jews (at the time of Paul writing) for well over a thousand years. This Law was supposed to lead the Jewish people into a life of righteousness. It was their right path.
So, when the Messiah walked among them, how did they miss Him?
Paul argues that they fell into the same error that I fell into in Wales.
They focused on the path. They were so obsessively focused on the Do’s and Don’t’s of the Law, that their concern was only with knowing the Law and keeping the Law. They fixated on the path, without realising that the path had a destination.
And the destination of the Law, was not a place. It was a person.
Jesus of Nazareth.
The End of the Law.
The path led to Him.
He is the playground and He is the picnic.
When we’re honest with ourselves, we can do this too.
It’s so easy for Christianity to become nothing more than a set of doctrinal ideas, or habitual (or not so habitual) practices. It’s so easy to reduce our Christianity to trying not to swear so much, or tell the truth, attend gatherings, or even to engage in projects of justice and peace and goodness. It’s so easy to reduce our Christianity to theory and doctrine, criticising those people over there who have it all wrong.
But all this merely focuses on the path. It’s all reduction, and reductionism is a great distortion. It all forgets that the path has a destination and His Name is Jesus. It misses that the core of our spirituality is simple faith in a real, living, breathing God who is made known to us in the real, living, breathing, person of Jesus, who still bears nail marks in His hands and His feet and who right now is attentive to your every thought and breath.
This is what faith is. It is a relational thing. It is Jesus. Every practice and every theology points towards Him.
The playground and the picnic.
And the destination of this moment, and every moment, into the playful banquet of eternity,
And the bear hug of the Father.
Reflect:
Let my thoughts wander for a moment. Where do they go?
Tasks? Rules? Ideas? Problems?
Take a moment to realign. Realign all priorities and every intention of your heart, right now, towards Jesus. If this day is to mean anything, it will find its meaning only in pointing towards Him.
Pray:
Father,
The path draws my gaze;
It feels rather easier to focus on what I can do,
Or what I can think,
Than to focus on you.
To read another blog, another self-help manual, to steward another habit or engage another fad.
The path draws my gaze.
But, Father,
Grant me this great and increasing gift:
Faith.
The simple, growing, daily focus upon you—
Your voice, your heart; your lead; your desires—
You,
Found in the face of Jesus my Lord.
Today, Holy Spirit,
Craft in me the great simplification
Of pursing Him in all things,
That my Destination may set my course,
And my journey may create beauty abounding as I go,
Into the arms of the Father,
And in Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Numbers 10:11-12:16 | Psalm 31:9-24