December 07, 2011
Shake A Leg
My daughter’s Shi-Tzu
doesn’t like snow and ice covered sidewalks, so she bought some dog-booties
that he likes even less. Once Charlie gets his shoes on for a walk his gate and
stride is similar to a high stepping tarantula trying to shake gum off his
feet. Every footstep is suspended in mid air and thrown out to the side. I can’t
help but laugh when I see Charlie’s indignation as he tries to throw off his
boots. It makes me wonder if the great cloud of witnesses might just get a
chuckle out of us when we are in a similar situation. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,
and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (Heb 12:1
NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Indeed we have a lot of weights strapped to our feet. I think most of us would be honest enough to admit that some we fully know should not be strapped there, yet we do not try to shake them off. Of course, some we do. Yet, I think of most weights we don’t know or even sense - the subtle misimpressions we hold about things without recognizing them as such, the subtleties of emotions which taint an otherwise good attitude into a catalyst for trouble, the numerous details of memory slightly distorted, stretched, or downplayed which effect sometimes important conclusions, and well, you get the drift, the innumerable errors of our very being. Though the weights we do try to throw off (and mostly succeed) are the heavy, obvious ones, I think the preponderance of them remains simply as part of our imperfect human nature hardly getting our attention. Soon Charlie will get use to his booties, too.
-----But really, Charlie’s booties are quite a different matter than are the weights of sin upon our feet. Leslie, Charlie’s benefactor and protector, put the booties on his feet to spare him the troubles of snowy, frozen sidewalks. That is much what God wants to do for our feet. Charlie does not understand the goodness of the booties. They are just foreign. Yet, Charlie should not be trying to shake them off. If the cloud of witnesses laugh at him, their laughter would not be at his clumsy efforts to get free of them; it would be at his naive notion that he needed to be freed from them.
-----God also puts something upon our feet which we somewhat try to shake off. Taking analogy straight from the Word, our feet are for wearing the gospel. How many times have we obviated the expression of some part of the righteousness God's made in us or of our knowledge about Jesus Christ just because the situation didn’t seem ripe for it, fit for it, or somehow safe for it? I know there are a lot of genuine Christians playing pro football. Pro football has been a prominent part of television for over forty years. And it has taken that long for a big debate to arise over some Tim Tebow being too outspoken about Jesus Christ. Frankly, there hasn’t been a Tim Tebow who doesn't try to shake at least a little of the gospel from his feet. Reggie White, The Minister of Defense, who became a preacher after his pro career, would help the sacked quarterback off the turf and ask him if he was alright. If he heard, “Yes,” then he would say, “OK, then, bless you.” If Tebow were a defensive end and had Reggie’s habit, he might reply with less gospel shaken from his feet, “OK, then, God bless you now and may Jesus Christ have mercy upon you during the next play!”
-----It isn’t that the gospel is strange to us, or that we somehow are ashamed of it. I think the gospel upon our feet arises from something else God knits there, kind of like socks for under the gospel - characteristics of walking right. In as much as a lot of this righteousness we acquire must be learned, we are as unaccustomed to it while learning as Charlie is to his new booties. As we become more tolerant to the new ways of righteousness knitting upon our feet, we become more comfortable with its being there in our walk. The more it is there in our walk, the more its effects dissolve many subtle weights of error from our feet, even without our awareness that it is so doing.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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