CAMPING WITH MY SON LAST WEEK, I was up early sitting by the fire … mesmerized by the flames.
“What is it?” I wondered, “that is so attractive about fire?”
Then, I remembered Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3).
Seeing the flame and wondering why it did not burn the bush into ashes, Moses turned aside to see. And that is when the Creator spoke to him with a rather odd instruction: “Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”
Why would Moses need to take his shoes off?
And that’s when it struck me: the function of shoes is to separate us from the ground, to keep us from getting our feet dirty and to protect them from injury.
But the Father doesn’t want us separated from Him. And he does want us to “get dirty” in our work. And he wants us to be vulnerable when we give our lives to serve Him.
Are you a shoeless Christian?
I’m not. But I want to be. I want to risk all, give all and be all He has for me to be.
I want to be like the martyred missionary, Jim Elliot, who determined to give up what he could not keep in order to gain what he could not lose.
Help me, Father. Help me be a man who seeks you and your will with his whole heart.
(Photos public domain from Wikimedia Commons)