Ephesians
6:15, “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim
the gospel of peace” (NIV).
I have been thinking about shoes all day
long. This is incredibly strange for
someone who doesn’t even like shoes!
This passage about the armor of God is an
interesting one for a variety of reasons.
Most of the pieces are defensive in nature (although not all), but the
language of armor and battle and war does not lend itself well to discussions
about peace… except when it does.
And when it comes to our feet, the word is “whatever.”
Whatever prepares you to proclaim the
gospel of peace, in the midst of struggle… put it on your feet and move! Because our shoes say an awful lot about
where we have been, where we are going, and what we are willing to do. And who we are, too… Our shoes say a lot about who we are.
As I began to process all of this, many
hours ago, a scene from a movie that I hadn’t seen in over twenty-five years
came to mind. I’m thirty-eight. If you do the math, you’ll quickly realize
that we’re talking about something that I saw when I was thirteen. It is absurd that it stood out so vividly in
my memory. The movie was “Fried Green
Tomatoes.” As I scribbled a note to
remember to look this up later, I immediately started to shorten it to an
abbreviation and was completely disturbed when it came out FGT… like this blog…
I viewed the film (which I cannot recommend…
and I certainly cannot recommend for young teenagers) early this evening,
because I wanted to make sure I was making appropriate connections. There are a couple of horrifying scenes
depicting the Ku Klux Klan (all scenes in all movies, books, media of any kind,
and especially real life which depict such an atrocity are horrifying), and a
main character asks why the participants in this violence do not have enough
sense to change their shoes if they don’t want others to know who they
are. What a great question!
If the private places our feet travel are
places of violence, hate, discrimination, and exclusivity; our shoes will
identify us as inadequate vessels of the gospel of peace. There is no hiding our character when the
most exposed parts of our beings provide undeniable clues about who we really
are.
Admittedly, I am a lousy example when it
comes to footwear. Y’all, I’ve been
faithfully wearing my flip flops in sub-zero temperatures, in the snow, all
week. But I guess this proves the
point. Maybe the world will know us by
our shoes… and where we’re willing to wear them. What’s on your feet?
L.
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