Shoes and Free Will

This has nothing to do with anything, but just something that occurred to me today while I was driving to work.  It was one of those “Ohhhh” moments where you remember something that happened months ago and you finally put it together, or something finally clicks, and you understand something you didn’t before.  Or maybe that’s just me and I’m the only one who can’t process things right away and I need months for it to seep through the hermetically sealed layer of LEAD that encases my brain.  Anyhow I had an “I get it” moment. 

Let me start from the beginning.  Last December there was a homeless guy in the Publix shopping center with a cart and a dog, and he was pushing the dog around on the cart and he had a sign that said he needed money or food or something, I don’t remember.  Anyhow I kind of ignored him, even though I do typically give money or food when I have it to homeless people.  Mostly I just respond when I feel THE NUDGE and that day I didn’t really feel overly burdened to give this guy anything.  I suppose that’s not a real Christian attitude, not to give something every single time I see someone who needs something, but there it is, the ugly me, and now you have seen it.  Like you didn’t already know I was a stingy wench anyway.  Anyhoo, I saw him a couple days later on a very cold morning and I happened to notice he had no SHOES.  And it was, like, 30 degrees that day, and here he was walking around on cold pavement barefoot.  So once I saw that, I was all, “Oh my gosh, man, where are your SHOES?”  So I made up my mind that I was going to buy this man some shoes.

That was maybe a Tuesday and I promptly forgot all about it until that Saturday, when Sarah Cate and I were off to a birthday party for a little friend of hers.  (Side note – “little friend.”  When my mom used to call my friends that, it would make me laugh because I would picture me and all my little friends – friends who were 1 foot high and I was this giant who had little tiny people-friends.   She called them my little friends until I was in high school and it never failed to make me laugh… and now I find myself doing it to my kids!)  So off we went to the party but I had a little bit of time beforehand, so we made The Fastest Target Trip In The History of Mankind so I could get this guy some shoes.  And socks.  And baby wipes because you know his feet would be dirty so he would have to clean them off before he put on his shoes.  (Don’t you start thinking I’m crazy, thinking about baby wipes for grown men.  This is where my mind was, never mind that he’s a homeless guy and he’s probably used to a little dirt here and there.  I’m just sayin’, baby wipes were what I was after.)

So off we race to the shoe department.  And I’m like, how in the WORLD am I supposed to know what size to get somebody I’ve never met?  It’s not like I’ve scrutinized the man’s feet, I just noticed the absence of shoes.  So I’m thinking, isn’t size 11 a man size?  Dallas wears size 10 and a half, and Dad probably wears a 12, so let’s split it and go with 11.  If they’re big, they’re big.  Who knows.  So I bought a pair of tennis shoes in size 11, some men’s athletic socks, some baby wipes, and off we went to the party.  On the way home I was telling myself that I was going to have to go home by that Publix and don’t forget, because I was going to go find that guy AND I could get a Diet Coke at Sonic too, so totally a win-win.  Because you know every good deed goes best with a Sonic Diet Coke.

And I get to the Publix and there is no homeless guy.  And I’m thinking, okay, he’s here every other day, why is he not here the one day I’m actually looking for him?  So I prayed, “God, if you want me to give this guy his shoes, let me find him.”  So around the parking lot I go again.  And there he is, standing in front of Sonic, in the rain, with the dog, WHERE I HAD JUST DRIVEN BY like 2 minutes before.   So I pulled up beside him, got out, and opened the back door and said to the guy, “I’ve got your shoes.”  Like we had somehow agreed on this beforehand and he had any reasonable expectation of some crazy girl stopping in the rain to give him shoes, of course, that’s what everybody does, right?  I was trying to be fast because I’d stopped right in the middle of the street, where people were going to have to drive around me.  And so of course when I try to be fast I get stupid and I say things like, "I've got your shoes."  The owl flies at midnight and all that.

 

He said,” What size are they?” and I said, “Size 11.”  And he goes, “That’ll work.”  So I gave him the socks and he put them on (I didn’t need the baby wipes because it was raining.  See.  All that for nothing.)   While he was putting the socks on I took the tags off the shoes and held them out and he put them on and I held his pants legs out of the way so he could tie them.  I put the rest of the socks on the cart, patted the dog on the head, he said, “Thank you,” I said, “You’re welcome,” I shut the back door and got in the car and left.  End of story.  Maybe a three-minute encounter.

Fast forward to sometime in February, when I’m driving through the Publix parking lot, and I see this guy again; I haven’t seen him since the Shoe Day.  I’ve got Carter in the car, and of course my mouth runs before my brain engages, as is my wont, and I see HE’S GOT NO SHOES ON.  And I say, “Mister MAN!  I bought you some perfectly good shoes!  Now go put them on and stop walking around barefoot!   Are you KIDDING ME??!”  Carter thought that was hysterical, and kept repeating it for DAYS.  So I wondered about that, where those shoes had got off to.  He couldn’t have worn them out.  Did he sell them for something else he wanted?  Did he give them away to somebody else who needed them more?  Did he take them off so people would feel sorry for him and give him money?  Did they hurt his feet so he chucked them?  I’ll never know, and I didn’t buy them for him so he’d cherish them forever and worship at the altar of All That Is Dana for blessing his rain-soaked life with the Great Gift of Target Shoes of Indeterminate Size.  I bought them for the simple fact that I saw that he had no shoes, and it was cold, and people need shoes on in the cold.  There it is.

So I forgot about it.  Until this morning when I’m driving through the Publix shopping lot and I was wondering if that guy was still around, and whether he had shoes on, because it’s really cold here this morning.   And it occurred to me that that homeless guy doing whatever he did with those shoes is eerily similar to what God does with us.  He grants us free will do as we please with regard to believing in Him.  He gives us the resources; He puts people in our path to show us His truth.  He gives us His word.  He draws us to Him in innumerable ways, whether it’s early on in our lives or the day that we die at 112.  But He leaves it up to us to decide what to do with it, because it’d be no fun for Him if he created a bunch of little robots that just did everything He told us to do.  Where’s the fun in that?  He WANTS us to choose Him.  But by giving us the choice, we might not make the choice to be with Him, and He knows that going into it.  He WANTS us to choose to be with Him, to glorify Him, to want to spend every day with Him.  But sometimes we throw it away because we think we know better, or sometimes we claim we don’t have the time to spend on Him.  I don’t know what that guy did with those shoes and I’ll never know, but the point was that they were his to do whatever he wanted with them.  They were a GIFT; I wasn’t asking for anything in return.  Just like Jesus is our gift, and all we have to do is take it and thank God for that gift and then share that gift with everyone else who doesn’t have it.  However you choose to share it, be that by buying homeless men shoes, or knocking on doors (“Landshark!”), or handing out tracts, or going on missions, or just by loving on somebody who needs it today. 

So there it is.  My incredibly long novel to share the simple statement that God loves you and wants to you make the choice to follow Him, which I could have said in less than one paragraph but somehow felt the need to hide that in a long story about shoes and homeless men.  And if you got all the way to the end, my friends, how much free time must you HAVE, and how bored could you POSSIBLY BE, to waste it on me? 

Seriously, though.  I’m glad you’re here.