NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

April 12

Scripture focus: A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Proverbs 17:17 NIV

On Monday, the day after Marion learned that she did not have pneumonia or bronchitis, but instead had a mass in her chest that was growing like a weed, she woke up from a nap and began chatting. “I was just thinking about my ‘sitting shoes.’ “

“What are ‘sitting shoes’ and why in the world are you thinking about them today?” I asked

“Vera (her sister-in-law that she adored) and I used to love to shop for shoes together. We’d find beautiful shoes that were at a great price but they didn’t come in our size. These were our ‘sitting shoes.’ ”

“You called them that because you had to leave them sitting on the shelf since they aren’t in your size?” I ask for clarification.

Marion peers at me as if I am a slow learner. Perhaps she wonders why, she, the one with a tumor in her chest the size of a grapefruit is smarter than her perfectly healthy but clueless daughter-in-law. “No, no dear, we couldn’t leave good deals like that sitting on the shelves! We bought those shoes! We just couldn’t walk in them.”

“Huh? Are you teasing me? If you didn’t walk in them, what did you do with them?”

“We sat in them.”

“Where did you sit with them?”

“At church!”

Vera and Marion thought it made perfect sense to buy beautiful shoes, have their husbands drop them at the door of the church (because the shoes were either too tight or too big to actually walk in) and then enjoy sitting in the pew and staring down at their lovely feet during the worship service.

“So what made you think about your ‘sitting shoes’ today?”

“Because I was thinking about how I’m going to have to wait for Vera to get to heaven and join me before the two of us can ever laugh about our ‘sitting shoes’ again.”

“Ahhh… that makes perfect sense.”

It wasn’t about the shoes. What is it that makes building a faith community such a unique and God-ordained adventure? More on that tomorrow.


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