Muddy River Media

Well the other day I bent down to tie up my shoes and noticed a major seam in the side had given way. I had hardly worn these Skechers since buying them eight months ago, but here they were... falling apart already.

I was not a happy camper. At. All.

When I buy shoes I plan on wearing them until they are just about falling off my hooves. I'm like the anti Imelda Marcos... I think I own six pairs of shoes in total:

• Crocs, which are my Winter slippers and Summer footwear all in one
• retro black Chuck Taylors my wife gave me at Christmas
• basketball reffing sneakers
• 14 year old Doc Martens with holes in the bottoms
• some sort of brown dress shoe I rarely wear
• aforementioned Skechers

I immediately returned to the Shoe Company with broken Skechers in hand and, after a brief session of show and tell I walked out with a new pair of Skechers... with no money exchanged!

Score!

It's like I got 8 months of shoe ownership free!

It got me thinking about what it must have been like for the Israelites as they tramped and traveled for forty years in the wilderness. During all that time God miraculously ensured that their clothes and shoes NEVER wore out. Amazing!

Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years." - Deuteronomy 8:4

Imagine if you were a sandal repairman during those forty years... not a whole lot of work beating down the flap of your tent. And I image more than one tailor was a bit ticked off at God's providence.

I also figure some of the more fashion-conscious tribe members chose to find the negative in the midst of grace - grumbling that they had to wear the same robe and hoodie for decades. After all, these are the same people who complained when God arranged their entire dietary requirements to miraculously appear on the ground in front of them each morning.

Not that I would have been any different. It is human nature to take for granted what we have... to complain about circumstances which others would be grateful for. We all need to step back a few steps and take a look at what we are complaining about. How significant is it really? How significant in light of eternity? How significant in light of what the vast majority of the world has to experience?

I mean, here I am, complaining that my nearly new shoes have burst a seam, when there are millions and millions of people in the world who will probably NEVER own a new pair of shoes... let alone drive their own car down the highway to the local big-box retail park and exchange them for a new pair.

Suddenly my life doesn't feel so meager because of my limited shoe collection.