Leonardo DaVinci’s famous painting, Mona Lisa, lies protected deep within the Louvre museum in Paris. Guards surround it and thick glass covers it to keep air and light from destroying this ancient work of art. Crowds of people come to look at it, and try to get a photo through the dark glass that encases it. It has not changed It has not changed in over 500 years. The same enigmatic smile, the same background. Those who looked at it in the early 1500’s saw the same thing I saw when I was there (without, of course, the dark glass case, the guards, and the people with cameras).

Outside of the museum, in one of it’s courtyards, is a vine that has been growing for years, perhaps since the museum was founded in 1793. Not many people notice the vine, but it is carefully attended by a gardener. While the vine is the same vine it has always been, it does not look the same as it did in the past. It is living and growing.

Our relationship with Jesus often becomes like that of the painting. We have not changed, we have not moved, we have not grown. We worship, study, pray to, and serve not a living God, but a portrait of what that God was like back when we first came to Christ. We turn a living relationship into a set of closely guarded and protected rules and dogma.

Yet Christ is alive and our relationship with him should be like that of the gardener and the vine. (As a matter of fact, Jesus said something about him being a vine and we the branches- a living relationship.) We should be growing, expanding in grace, serving  in new ways, and welcoming people to the family of Christ that are different from us.

Here’s a quick way to tell if you’re worshiping an idol, or in relationship with a living God. As in all things be honest. Answer these questions:

1. How have you changed in the last year?

2. What do you believe now that is different from what you believed when you first came to Christ?

3. Would those who know you best say you are changing in ways that make you attract people to Jesus?

4. Who have you last brought to Jesus?

The answers will tell a lot about whether your relationship is with a painting or a living vine.

(Credit Where Credit’s Due Department: the idea for this came from Selling Water By The River by Shane Hipps. I highly recommend the book.)

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If I could do anything else for a living, I would walk. I see the world more clearly when I am walking. My thoughts are much better, I am more creative, and more peaceful. I notice the large things and the small ones. I see the past more clearly and the future more hopefully.

I love walking in places where I am familiar. I get to see new things that I had not noticed before. I notice the details. At night, I see how the light shines in the darkness, and see the same things differently than I do in the day. I wonder about the people in the homes, and pray for the families  on the street.

I love walking in new places. I like seeing something I’ve never seen before, for getting a new view of the world, for discovering something that may be old for others, but new for me.

I love discovering old paths, walking them and thinking about who has walked them before.

And I love walking, or making, new paths. To go where others may have looked, but not walked.

When I was 8 I would walk all over Inman. I would explore the well-known streets, go down the little side alleys, discover shortcuts through hedges. When I first moved to Florence, I walked all over town. For a while I was known to folks as the “walking preacher.” And I love James Taylor’s song “Walking Man.”

One of my fantasies is walking across South Carolina, starting at the state line at Tryon NC/Landrum SC, following US 176 as far as I could (Goose Creek r NOrth Charleston) then walking on out to Folly Beach. Maybe writing a story about it- about people and towns and history. Recollect times in my own life at various places along the path.

My grandfather, who loved to walk, once said that people (this was in the 1950s) saw the world through automobile windows. We don’t even see it that way anymore. We see it through electronic screens. Computers, phones, tablets, tvs. 

Sometimes, most times, I think I could walk forever.

And so the question comes to my mind, if I love walking so much, why don’t I do it more? Or at all? I seem to have stopped. And that is to my pain and detriment.

Jesus called his followers to walk with him. I hope I don’t stop that walk.

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