For today’s post I’m going to begin with a bit of personal storytelling indulgence about my first day of teaching. Well, driving to my first day of teaching.
It was February 11th, 2009, and I had a bit of a drive, about 45 minutes to get to the school. It wasn’t too long into the trip that I discovered that my anklet sock (my sock of choice) had slipped into my shoe and was rubbing on the soul of my foot.
It was a little irritating and at several points on the way I attempted to reach down and pull it back up to my ankle. However, at no point did I have enough time. I must have had a dream run with the traffic lights that day.
It wasn’t until I got to the school carpark that I was finally able to stop the car and reach down to grab the sock, well into my shoe by that time.
I had the Christian radio station playing and at the exact moment I reached down and touched my foot, the song on sang the line of a fairly well-known Bible verse:
How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news…
I know I’ve blogged about it before, but I love the shepherds in the account of Jesus’ birth. They just get it.
After they get freaked out by a bunch of angels, they respond correctly.
They have a chat and waste no time. “Let’s go,” they say. Then the Bible records that they “hurried off”. They successfully find Mary and Joseph and the baby, Jesus in the manger.
Then what do they next?
They get some beautiful feet.
When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
Spot on, first time.
God appears to have a soft spot for shepherds like I do because there’s a few shepherds in the Bible of note:
King David, originally a shepherd boy.
The prophet, Amos, whose words are found in the Old Testament.
And even Jesus refers to himself as The Good Shepherd, borrowing from the most famous psalm, Psalm 23.
There’d be plenty of people I know who would say that I love teaching. But guess what, they’d be wrong.
And I know what you’re thinking: no one likes teaching once they get into it.
Sure, but some of us don’t like teaching even before we get into it. Yet we end up there for a variety of reasons. Sometimes life and other people make the decision for us.
However, sometimes when we find ourselves there (or for you, another vocation), we discover that even though we’d prefer to be doing something else, we’ve been given a job to do: another job. A calling, even.
Be beautiful feet.
Now, this is not an easy thing to do. There are hills and valleys to walk through (my first year of teaching was not fun). But we walk through them with a good Shepherd.
One who provides us with everything we need.
Which mean we can then do everything we need, to have beautiful feet.
So this Christmas, let’s aim to be like the shepherds hurrying to respond to God’s word and then telling others about the good news of a Good Shepherd.
God wants us to respond. That’s why Jesus came to bring us truly good news. But people can’t respond to something if they know nothing about it.
So, why not put on your sock of choice, and hurry to have beautiful feet walking towards those who need to hear the good news.
Yours painting her toenails,
Alison
