Skip to main content

Take Off Your Shoes

I came home from teaching piano lessons tonight right as the kids were brushing their teeth in the bathroom. After setting down my things, I immediately went upstairs to help with the bedtime routine. I was promptly greeted at the top of the stairs by the twins' warm smiles and exaggerated hugs. When I asked Isaiah if he was ready for bed his only response was, "Dada, I think you should take off your shoes."

This is not the first time he has instructed me in this. Especially if I am upstairs on the carpet, Isaiah is the first to remind me to take my shoes off. While on the surface level one could deduce that Isaiah is concerned for the well being of our luxuriously thread bare flooring area, I see a much more prominent statement that he is making.

Dada, won't you stay a while?

And it cuts me to the quick every time.

Maybe much like your family, we only wear shoes when we are headed outside. And that means that there is only one logical explanation for wearing shoes: you are headed out. During the day, wearing shoes could mean a host of things--yard work, playing baseball, going for a walk, fixing the car, etc.--but in the evening wearing shoes can only mean one thing: you're headed away from us.

And I fear that Isaiah sees me wearing shoes all too often.

I am constantly coming in and out of the house. Scheduling meetings and work around every crevice of free time that my weekly schedule can allow. I put my shoes on first thing in the morning before the kids are awake and I take my shoes off after the kids are in bed.
Sometimes I leave my shoes on during dinner because I need to step out to a rehearsal.
Sometimes I wear my shoes when I'm tucking them into bed because I have to step out to a meeting.
Sometimes I just plain forget to take my shoes off because it is such a part of my culture right now that I forget that I am wearing them to begin with.

When Isaiah asked me to take off my shoes, it immediately recalled another unshodding instance in the Old Testament between Moses and a burning bush. We can pick up the story in Exodus 3

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father,[a] the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
Every other time I have read this passage, I have always assumed that the take away was that God was pure and holy and righteous and awesome and wonderful and that Moses was defiling God's presence in some way by wearing shoes. And yes, that may be part of the case. But, I can't help but wonder if God is asking the same thing of Moses that Isaiah asked of me: Won't you stay in my presence just a little while longer?
--------------------

Of course, my immediate response was to kick off my shoes and assure my son that I was with him for the rest of the night. I was not going anywhere, I was going to be with my children just to spend time in their company.

As you consider your day, are you hearing the times when God is asking you to take off your shoes?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Casting A Conscientious Vote

Here's the thing America: you nominated two terrible representatives for public office--one "Republican" and one Democrat. Both of their campaign managers have decided that the strongest approach to get elected is to basically claim " at least I'm not them ." Both parties have released ad campaigns to bash the other candidate and both, I might argue, do so quite effectively. Now that I have successfully been persuaded that I should vote for neither candidate (thanks to the other candidate), I am left wondering who there is left to vote for. Certainly there is some candidate who is both qualified as a politician and as a person of reasonable morals?? Enter the 3rd party system. America was founded against a national party system (you can read about that here  for an enlightening time). And yet it is this national party system that has allowed a Democratic convert like Donald Trump to represent the Republican party. Trump knew that the only way to have a ...

Less

WLC Day 3 Before you can add anything to your life you first need to subtract. In this particular case, if I want to add something like a workout to my day, I have to subtract a) play time/free time or, b) sleep. Before I can add any additional activity, group, or discipline to my life, I first need to take away an existing one. This is gonna stink. I know I need to identify what those things are that need pruning, but I just don't want to do it.

Cincinnati Reads

 It's taken a whole week to be able to talk about it, but I think it's finally time to mention that the playoffs don't matter any more. Who cares whether which big market team wins the world series?? San Fransisco knocked off the Reds, so I can't root for them, the Cardinals I can never root for, the Yankees no one cares to root for, and that leaves the Tigers (whom I love dearly, but don't follow very closely...like a second cousin or something). We took Isaiah to clinch game #2 (a.k.a. Wednesday night's loss) and then my dad and I received tickets to go to Thursday's clinch game #3 (a.k.a. The End of the Season). We had great seats for game #3--so close that I could yell at the guys in SF's bullpen and I knew they could hear me. I got into their heads, saying things like, "Hey! Which of you is going to be the first to cry when a Redleg hits a game winning homerun off of you?" (those are biting words). Then I decided to shout at SF's rig...