Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Old Proverbs, New Shoes

Some old proverbs ring true.
"Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes" is one of my favorites. I like it because of the simplicity of the prompt, the straightforwardness of the language, the image it evokes in the mind of the recipient, and because it is such a difficult thing to do.

There are people whose "shoes" I know I could not wear. I worry that I do not have the courage to get even a few steps forward on that journey. This is something that makes all of us unique. We have different loads to bear, and we handle them with different levels of comfort and skill. i believe that God never gives us more than we can handle, and this is something that I have repeated to myself in my darkest times, and it has carried me through. I look at the characters in my life story and find some that seem miraculously well-fitted to tragedy, and they handle it with grace and honor. There are others, and I hope I do not fall into this category, that struggle with the few problems they face. We are all given our own loads to bear, and we have to trust that someone more powerful than all of us knows which weight He can assign to each pair of shoulders. Let this idea carry you through your darkest times, let it lift your face when you feel burdened and weighed down. Let it give you hope for a brighter tomorrow.

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