The Parables of the Lost Eyeglasses and the Old Boots in New Wineskins
They once were lost, but now they’re found. Was blind — okay, unable to read — but now I see
I bought those old, original Timberland boots back in the 1990s, and I still have them. I keep saying I’ll get them bronzed because I’ve worn them at the Temple Mount and at the top of the Empire State Building. I’ve worn them in the excavated synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus drove a demon out of a man and at the foot of the Twin Towers before the spot became hallowed as Ground Zero.
Now, I most often wear them to do yard work since they’re old and falling apart.
A few years after I bought that first pair, I bought another pair of Timberlands. These had a spiffier style. They never were worn on the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, or to New York City. Nor did they stand in same spot George Washington did as he led the writing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia. But that old pair did.
And the newer pair didn’t last as long. The fancy accouterments peeled loose and the soles came unglued. Eventually, I wished for another pair of the originals, but they’d stopped making them.
Then, a couple of years ago I was in the discount show store and there they were. The exact same pair I’d worn to all those famous and plain old places. I snapped them up.
They weren’t as comfortable as the old ones, but that’s just because they hadn’t been worn in yet. Give ’em time.
Alas, not so. They started falling apart long before they ever got broken in. They never became so comfortable it was like you weren’t even wearing shoes.
Oh, well. You can’t put new wine in old wineskins. And you can’t expect a pair of boots that have been sitting in a hot warehouse for two decades not to disintegrate when you put them on your feet and to inhabit the same spirit as their brand-new cousins did in your youth.
I’ve seen this movie before — literally — when Mel Gibson was frozen in the 1930s by Norm from Cheers, then he gets unfrozen in the 1990s by Jamie Lee Curtis, but his once-young wife is now an old woman. They’ve got no memories of a full life together, and he eventually ages really fast to catch up to her, just like my new “old” boots did.
That second pair of the “old” Timberlands are a stand-in for my feeble attempts to reboot my faith from scratch rather than simply continuing in the walk I set out on when I first began my journey with God. I may have gotten diverted from the perfect path, but finding your way back beats trying to go back to the beginning and start all over. All those missteps were bad for you at the time, but now that they’ve happened, they’ve reshaped you — given you compassion for other’s who are wandering and need a guide to bring them back.
I’ve set the old “old” boots aside for that possible bronzing, and was wearing the new “old” boots today as I mowed the yard. I had the push mower do some close-up work around the trees and bushes when I looked down and saw my “old” glasses staring back up at me. I had lost them a week earlier while I was trimming bushes and, after multiple fruitless attempts to find them had resigned myself to the fact they were gone for good.
But nope, they had been lying right beside the sidewalk all this time and I had walked by them multiple times. By God’s grace, I had not yet mowed the spot where they had patiently awaited me to pick them up.
Sometimes searching and searching for your vision doesn’t do any good, and you’ve just got to start getting your house in order before you find it.
Like I said, this was my old pair that I wear while doing things like yardwork — but still, without them I had no backups in case anything happened to my good pair.
I felt like the woman Jesus parabled about who rejoiced with her friends after finding the lost coin — though, in my case, the “party” was merely me walking into the house and finding my wife, holding the glasses in one had and pointing to them with the other.
I gave them a good baptism in the bathroom sink and finished the job off with some lens cleaner and a proper cloth.
Yes, we need a clear vision of where we are progressing toward, but just as important is the ability to see the path we’ve trod.
