Tag: transfiguration

2 Peter 1:16-21                                                                   

Matthew 17:1-9                                                                    

I don’t know about you, but as I go along through life there are little things people say to me or little things that happen – almost incidentally at the time – that I come back to again and again, that are so much more important than all the hours I spent in school or all my attempts to learn big truths.

One afternoon back when I was in seminary – this was in rural Wisconsin, country a lot like here – I was out on a walk with an old man who was a visiting teacher. He happened to be the retired Archbishop of Canterbury, but that isn’t really important to the story. It was mud season, which they have in Wisconsin like we have here. We were walking along this muddy road, looking up at the willow trees that were beginning to turn gold and some migrating geese honking their way north, and the beautiful spring sky. And all of a sudden, old Bishop Ramsay stumbled in a muddy spot, catching hold of my arm before he fell.

“This is a lesson, John,” he said. “In life you have to keep your eyes on the sky, but your feet in the dirt.” He was actually talking about life in the Church, but it’s true about all life: eyes on the sky, feet in the dirt. To live a happy and productive life, we need vision, goals, dreams, a horizon, hopes. But we also need to keep our feet on the ground, in the mud and the dust. Life is a lot of plodding along, one foot in front of another.