new church life: november/december 2014
And yet at the end of the Bible, in
the final promise of the New Testament,
the same God declares that He makes
all things new. (Revelation 21:5) All
things. Nothing lasts unchanging. Isn’t
this a contradiction? Can anything last
forever?
The idea I want to offer you today
is that perhaps lasting forever and
changing are not incompatible.
I want to tell you a story about a
woman named Jacqueline Kiplimo. She
is an elite Kenyan marathon runner.
She has trained her whole life to win,
to be the best, to make a name for
herself as the world’s top runner. Four
years ago, she entered an international
marathon in China, a big race on the
world stage, with a $10,000 prize for
the winner.
A third of the way into the race,
she had the lead time, she was wellpaced, everything was going perfectly
according to plan. And then she caught
up with another runner, also an elite
marathoner, also with dreams of winning. This man was an elite athlete, but he
was also disabled: earlier in his life he had lost his hands.
As they ran through a water station, she realized that he couldn’t drink
and run at the same time. In fact, it took tremendous effort and time for him