these shoes

Nov 10, 2024

.

It’s Saturday late afternoon as I write.

I spent time last month leading retreats in Australia. Last weekend I was in Hokitika and Kokatahi on the West Coast of my home diocese of Christchurch. Yesterday I arrived in Indonesia and now am accompanying a group of retreatants from half a dozen countries across South-East Asia. Later tomorrow night when we conclude this weekend I’ll be on a flight back to Christchurch.

The shoes I wear could tell some stories of the many places I’ve travelled to meet wonderful people who share the treasure of their experience of God. But even more significantly the shoes of these people could tell of richly lived lives and roads walked through the ups and downs of complex twenty-first living.

This inspiring awareness was with me last weekend on the Coast, during the Australian retreats, and as I woke this morning in the hill-country of Indonesia.

Our theme for the weekend has been the discovery of the freedom for which we hunger and which we find in dependance on God.

At first the idea of that seems paradoxical: surely freedom in an absence from every dependance?

And then this morning, listening to the prepared reflections of John, Caroline, Rega, Diva and Fitri, I understood.

They spoke of the reality of their lives telling of their struggles with parents and children, work, health and physical limitations. A theme in each sharing was that their suffering was in significant part, the consequence of their attachment to their own plans for their own lives, their children and parents, work and health.

Such misplaced dependance is both fickle and fraught.

They told of the freedom they found whenever they chose to live with complete dependence on God.

And then a few moments ago as I entered the conference room the maze of shoes spoke volumes.

+

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or john@fff.org.nz for several copies

 

2 Comments

  1. How beautiful is this picture John.. there is nothing more freeing than being able to take off one’s shoes and walk barefoot.
    The analogy of removing the shoes of our constricted ways of living a life to fit into the ways and expectations of the world, and walking barefoot in the presence of our ever loving and merciful God is a wonderful picture to carry with me today. Thank you

    Reply
  2. Dependence on our own plans is indeed ‘fickle and fraught’ as so many in the USA find their own world being turned upside down. But God sometime chooses someone we could not imagine to carry out His work, e.g. St Paul. Perhaps we should begin a prayer group seeking that the Holy Spirit touch Donald Trump to do good for his country and the world.

    Reply

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