Let Me Be My Slippers

I’ve noticed recently how social media is packed with people voicing their opinions, often in less than productive ways.

The topics are varied and endless. There are angry posts about vaccines and degrading posts about anti-vaccine people. There are vitriolic epithets about women and abortion, for and against. There are posts about why a pastor should or shouldn’t have prayed with the President. There is a riot here on this page because Christians are too legalistic; one there because too much grace is being extended.

The Bible was never intended to be God’s ultimate intent for people. That’s a comment (as I recall it) that I saw the other day that I’m having a little trouble shaking because I keep thinking, if Christians don’t believe the Bible is God’s Word for them, what do they have to guide them?

Above all, the handy thing is, anyone can say anything because they don’t have to eat supper with the people they are arguing with. In fact, they probably don’t ever have to see them face to face.

Voices clamor. Words fly like bullets. Comments fall like the guillotine, and suddenly I understand how the French Revolution happened and why the streets ran slick with blood. Not because I’m up on politics, either. I wonder if this polarization isn’t similar to the atmosphere that led Charles Dickens to say, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, in the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities.

This is kind of random, but I got thin teal slippers at Christmas this year at Laurel Street. Each has a small yellow triangle for a nose and two embroidered eyes. They also had two ears each, teal pom poms sewed to the fabric.

Honestly, I thought they were cute in a Dr. Seuss sort of way, but I wasn’t sure if I would end up wearing them.

Instead, it’s June I have worn them ragged. I wish Sarah would buy me another pair! Oh yes, for my birthday! Ahem.

Why do I like the cartoonish slippers so much?

Well, they slip on to my feet and stay on with elastic, so I can run up stairs without losing one or both. Also, they are just thin enough to be out of the way and just thick enough to keep my feet warm.

They’re getting beat up, though. One has lost both ears and the other has lost half an ear. The soles have worn huge holes and the white batting has come out. But I still wear them all the time. They always do whatever I want them to do.

And I suddenly realize that the people I most admire both in Scripture and in my life experience are a little like those slippers. The ones who serve God tirelessly wherever he is working. The ones who realize that we are all cut from the same thin slipper cloth, and we all have a worn patch or two.

Somehow, when people see themselves in their smallness in comparison to their Master, they lose their hysterical voices. They see their own unworthiness so clearly. They know their sin is only to be solved in the dust at the foot of the cross. They face other people’s sins without arrogance or shock or gossip. They deal with sin in their own lives or the lives of people in their care completely and unfalteringly, because God’s Word says it’s wrong, and not because it is the latest passion of a witch-hunting world. They say, But for the grace of God, there would I be.

Thank God, I find these people everywhere when I look up from my screen. I find them in my family, my church, and the people I work with as a writer. I have great role models, including the ones on my feet.

Let me be my slippers!