Remember getting a new pair of shoes when you were a kid? I remember my mother taking all five of us to Boudoin’s Shoe Store on Main Street in Jennings. The tinkle of the little bell on the door announced our presence. We all got a turn to sit in the chair for Mr. Boudoin himself to measure our foot. Then we tried on shoes until we found the best pair. We always put our old shoes in the shoe box to carry home and wore our new shoes out of the store. We walked a little different, a little straighter, stood a little taller. When I took my five sons to buy new shoes, it was a completely different experience. No smell of leather when we entered the discount shoe store and no one to give us personal attention. While I tried shoes on one boy, the others ran the aisles. I left with a headache, but the boys felt the same way my siblings and I used to feel. They claimed they could jump higher and run faster with those new sneakers!
The apostle Paul must have been thinking of getting new sandals when he told the Ephesians, “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” (It is in the passage of putting on the whole armor of God in Ephesians 6.) How we need to hear the gospel of peace proclaimed in our world! In Isaiah 52:7 we read, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns!”
Go out and share the good news of peace and salvation. As we were reminded at Easter, “Our God reigns!”
