April 14, 2024
A little over a year ago, in my morning prayer time, I sat in my recliner, kicked off my shoes, and began to meditate upon the Lord. When I awakened from a deep sleep, one of my shoes was missing. Ever since, I’ve been looking for that missing shoe. Three times, I turned the recliner upside down, but no, it wasn’t anywhere. Both shoes dropped to the floor, so they both had to be within a few inches of each other. No, one was there, but the other wasn’t. How? Why? I don’t know what transpired while I was asleep, but I now have a suspicion. After ruling out every possibility, the answer must be in the impossibility. The shoe couldn’t just “disappear.” While I was sleeping, somebody took it. But at three o’clock in the morning? Nobody downstairs would have done that. Besides, the sound would have awakened me, wouldn’t it? But who else? Today, I remembered the Jewish significance in the surrender of property rights. Ruth 4:6 describes a man surrendering his sandal to make the agreement official that he was giving up his legal rights. What if God took the shoe because I was surrendering my rights? As impossible as this sounds, I have no better answer. Now I remember another time, about a year before that, when I got this strange idea that I could sign a contract with God. So I tore off a pale green sheet from a steno pad and put my signature at the bottom, agreeing to whatever condition God might put on the page. Where did it go? I put it in my file drawer, but later when I looked, I couldn’t find it. Unhappy because I couldn’t find it, I made a duplicate, which I still have. Perhaps God doesn’t need the duplicate because he has the original. There’s no way to prove any of this, one way or the other. But I’m left with no choice but to wonder. I don’t expect you to believe this really happened. Why? Because I can’t believe it myself. My problem is: I can’t imagine any other possibility. So I’m faced with the unavoidable thought that all of it could be true. If it is, then I know that God’s love for us is much greater than common religious perceptions. Shoe or not, contract or not, the reality remains that all I have and all I am belongs to the Lord. Frank Ball, Roaring Writer