Our church is doing a shoe drive this fall.  People are encouraged to go through their closets and bring in the shoes they no longer wear.  They will be donated to an organization that distributes the shoes to people all over the world who have none.  It’s a fairly easy thing to do; it doesn’t take much time and doesn’t cost any money.  But to be honest, the process made me a little sick, and it wasn’t  from the smell of my son’s pile of cast-off athletic footwear.  Just look at that – nine pairs of shoes.  (There were ten pairs, but my husband nabbed one.  Now we have to go through his closet.)

While someone is walking around shoe-less, I am sitting on ten pairs.  It’s a humbling thought…it’s a sobering truth.  It’s not fair.

In light of all this, I had to chuckle when I read about the Israelites’ shoe situation during their 40 years in the desert.  Moses reminded the people: “During the forty years that I led you through the desert, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.”   Forty years.  Same pair of shoes.  Forty years.  Same stinkin’ pair of sandals.  Darn things just wouldn’t wear out.  That would be like me still wearing the same PF Flyers I had when I was 10, every day for four decades. 

So it seems God can even put life into an old pair of sandals.  That thought just makes me smile.  May these nine pair of shoes fit the feet of someone, somewhere.  (They will have to be size 15.)  May I be content with a smaller pile in my closet.  May my Nikes last til I’m 90.