Shoes

Hoping. Praying. Praying some more and hoping for a change. A change for the better. A material change in the full sense of the word and more. A glimpse around you and you realise that you are different, just like everyone else is. You can't be them and they can never be you. You are you and just that. Created for God's own pleasure - believe it or not. Their story is different and you don't know it. You have your very own unique one, which you can relate to totally; of course you have lived every one of those moments personally and no one can or will beat you at fitting your own shoe. It's yours, it's been tailor made specifically for you and you got to learn to move in it. After all progress has not much to do with speed as it has with direction.

So, back to the shoes - it doesn't really matter whether you hobble, drag along, hop - no matter the style of movement so long you are going in the direction that you want then you are making good enough progress. Keep going for there is One above, who watches you, who knows every intricacy of your being and has a plan for your life. Amid all the confusion, noise, drawbacks, disappointment and what have you in between - it doesn't really matter what it's like at the moment. It matters that He knows exactly what is happening. It matters that He sees it all and never for a moment lets you slip off. So hang on and hang in there. You have the best and greatest consolation in that He knows where you are coming from, where you are now and ultimately where you are going. His peace, which surpasses all understanding will overtake you and overshadow you. It will give you that quiet deep inside; inexplicable calm.

And the story has inevitably swerved to Him whose name is Holy, Holiness is who He is. It is humbling to know Him and have the surest assurance that He is near. Even more humbling to talk to Him knowing that in all your littleness, He still has time to listen to you and understand you. It is overwhelming to know that you have a perpetual and never-failing covering. A solid rock on which you can stand for all others are but sinking ground and cannot be trusted.

That brings me back square to the shoes, the very shoes which were designed for me, or is it that i designed them? I really don't know but what i care about is that with those shoes; whether straight or crooked, beautiful or ugly, intact or tattered - no matter what they are, I can humbly come in them before Him the great I AM, and remove them as Moses did when he encountered the burning bush. I take off them filthy and heavy shoes; take off all the burden embedded in the shoes; get rid of all the ridicule associated with them shoes; i literally dump at His feet all the shame, the worry, the sorrow, the grief, the anger, the disappointment, all the what have yous that come with them shoes. Shake off all the crap that makes the shoe; the shoe by which the world judges me, the shoe by which the world levels me up; the shoe which the world put on the scale to determine my weight and worth. Surprisingly, yet not so surprisingly, all that grit and slime and ogre and dirt that make the shoe too heavy to walk in steadily- become very very light when placed on the 'world scale'. They 'miraculously' suspend most of their weight in the air only to record a feather weight. Definite ridicule in the sight of the world.

But what does it matter? What does anything matter at all? Except now you are before The Fire and as carefully yet carelessly as possible you take off the shoes and leave them there. Chuck them away, far far away - and now it is just you. Just you before your Maker. He is there for the pure you, the clean you, the undefiled you, the undenied you. The you that is free of debt, sickness, worry or any other cares. It's just you, the beautiful you, the glowing you, the happy you, the fulfilled you. Phew. Relief. That place. The place of peace, calm, quiet. Nothing and nobody else gives that. Is it any wonder then, that a day in the courts of the Lord is way way better than thousands elsewhere.

No better place to get a new pair of shoes than in the house of God....God is AAAwesome!!

Isiah 55:1-2
            Mathew 11:30 
                    Psalm 55:22