Going Barefoot

Tough, tough morning.

I heard it said once: "If Satan attacks you, he's working for Jesus."

It happened before I even got up this morning - a little domestic incident that reveals my incompetence as a husband! (I don't disagree that I'm incompetent.) It's always those tiny stones in your shoe that stop you from walking: too big to be sand yet small enough to slip in unnoticed. Your foot moves in your shoe and that tiny stone moves as well . . . ouch, where did that come from?

I didn't switch the tumble drier back on after I pulled stuff out of it last night. The result? Someone didn't have dry kit for work this morning. I could have sworn I pressed the button, but I didn't check that it had started working again. I should've pressed and held the button. Oh dear.

God does give notice, but why was it such a surprise? I didn't listen. I saw it coming. It usually happens when I'm tired. But it caught me blindside. I complained and blamed, heard things that were never said and, eventually, called out and scrambled in prayer to get out of the hole I fell in.

But it's not the stone that God is bothered about, it's not about the source of irritation or the sandal you're wearing as if He just cares about your comfort; it's about the heart that gets irate and irritated. It's about the heart that responds out of self-defence. There is only one way out, and it isn't up - it's down, not a highway but a low-way. Don't bother to stop and lean on someone so you can whip your shoe off and make yourself feel better - just kick them both off and go barefoot.

When you hold something - anything - against or within yourself there will always be a little 'thing' that can work its way in between you and that 'thing'. It's presence to remind you there is a 'thing' between you and the outside world, that hard skin of leather. Throw it off: it only insulates you from feeling the pain and suffering that are yours, so that when the real thing comes along you are unprepared and give up in despair for comfort's sake.

Go barefoot and take nothing with you; allow the stone and grit of the road to grind against your feet all day long until, at its end, the Lord will be lower than you and wash it all away.