Walk A Mile In My Shoes

By John Stallings
 
“Walk a mile in my shoes."

 That's a saying that became a 60s song. "Walk a mile in my shoes," the song says;
   
 “Before you accuse, criticize and abuse, walk a mile in my shoes.”

The song was popular. The saying still is because no one knows exactly how our shoes fit, where they pinch, and how they bind. No one knows how many pebbles are in our shoes as a result of our travels and travails. I really don't know you, and you really don't know me till we've walked a mile in each others shoes.
  
 Of course, I want no part of your stinky, broken down muddy shoes and you want no part of mine. Actually, even if we wanted to, we couldn't really get into each others shoes. You know how it is with shoes; they conform to your feet; nobody can wear them the way you do. No one that is -except for Jesus.

Jesus has walked a mile in our shoes…In the Incarnation. He came down the starry stairway from heaven and stepped into our shoes. He put on our shoes in Mary’s womb. God the Son, who walked in the heavens on the backs of glistening angels and tread the clouds of eternity, slipped into our human shoes through the womb of the Virgin Mary. He whose feet were so holy that angels worshiped them and kissed them assumed the feet of a human embryo.

But God the Son didn't just walk a mile in our humanity; He walked a mile in our fallen humanity, in our sins. He didn't just become Man but He became a Man of sorrows and one acquainted with grief. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He stepped, not into brand new shoes but into shoes caked with mud from where we ought not to have walked, scuffed and shrunken by our salty tears.

Jesus has walked in those sick shoes of ours, and He has walked in our tired, hopeless, sad, and weak ones. All of those shoes of ours that someway reflect the fallen condition of humanity, Jesus has walked in. And He walked a lot more than a mile in them. A mile is a long way to walk in tight, binding, wet, or stone-filled shoes, but Jesus went miles and miles before He slept in our grave. He wore our ugly, "holey," too small shoes all the way into hell.

Have you ever been made fun of because of your shoes? I grew up around kids many of whom wore attractive, colorful tennis shoes. I however never wore anything but those old black tennis shoes. At times I was teased unmercifully. My shoes as I remember sold for about two dollars. You get over that sort of teasing. Jesus didn't get over His.

 Because He had our shoes on, Jesus was made fun of, mocked and ridiculed. They called Him names, spit on Him and struck Him. All He had to do was kick our shoes off and the abuse would've stopped. But Jesus kept walking in our shoes even to the point of coming under the terrible wrath of God. Because He wore our shoes, Jesus went ever deeper into the pit of hell. He went so deep that the love, the grace, the mercy of God disappeared for awhile.  He went deeper and hotter into our agony till He died the death of a sinner.

Jesus died with our boots on. What's more He rose from the grave still wearing our shoes, still being clothed in our humanity. And what's even more important, Jesus walked in our shoes all the way into heaven itself. That’s why the ascension is so important to the Church along with Christmas and Easter. Multitudes have never given a thought to the fact that Jesus bodily ascended into heaven…that he had on the shoes of our humanity when He left the earth.

When Jesus walked the earth for 33 years in our shoes, whenever He went away from the disciples, He did so just like we do. He walked to Mary and Martha's, they walked toward Jerusalem. They could see Jesus walking around. They knew He was right over there eating with Mary and Martha, and would come back from there.

Once Jesus rose from the dead, that changed. For the 40 days after Easter Sunday until the ascension, Jesus didn't walk toward the disciples or away from them. One minute Jesus wasn't visible; the next He was. One minute He was standing there; the next He wasn't. Just before the ascension, Jesus met them in Jerusalem, led them out to Bethany on the Mount of Olives, and walked with them like He had during His earthly ministry- but as He had NOT done since Easter. There He was lifted up from them. Once more they bodily saw Him going higher and - away from them.

 The Holy Spirit wants us to see that Jesus ascended in our shoes. Why do we think He tells us that Jesus gave "many proofs" that He was physically alive? Jesus points out to them His flesh and bones and even asks them to give Him something to eat. The message is that this body you see before you ascending is the same one that was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

This fact is emphasized in Luke. For example, Jesus during His earthly life must have lifted up His hands many times, but only at the ascension are we told, "And lifting up His hands He blessed them." What was on those hands? The nails marks that He allowed the disciples to touch and invited Thomas to stick his finger into. These very visible wounds were seen by the disciples; they were proof positive that He still wore their shoes, still bore their humanity as He went up.

Went up to where? Acts tells us Jesus was lifted up until a cloud received Him. This was no ordinary cloud. This was the Cloudy Presence of the Godhead. We see it in the Old Testament leading the Israelites, hovering above the Ark of the Covenant, and filling the temple. In the New Testament you find the Cloudy Presence descending on the Mount of Transfiguration and whisking Moses and Elijah back to heaven.

Where exactly does this Cloudy Presence take Jesus and our shoes with Him? Ephesians tells us where. It takes Him to the Right Hand of God. Ephesians 4 says that Jesus "ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things." Jesus since the ascension is now everywhere all the time. He is walking the streets of earth, the craters of the Moon, and the far reaches of the universe right now. Jesus, shod in our shoes, walks and talks with angels, and all the host of heaven. I get goose-bumps just thinking about it.

When Jesus was bodily received by the cloud, the Son of Man, the Virgin's Son, the Man in our shoes was taken into the Godhead. In Christ, man, humanity, people, men, women and children sit on the Board of Heaven, have a seat on the Committee of Eternity, and are part of the Commission on Everlasting Life.

Jesus took our shoes where no man, woman, or child has gone before. Our shoes now have all things, bar none, under them. Ephesians says that. Jesus is far above all rule, authority, and power and dominion with "all things under His FEET." The Father said to His son, "Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for Your FEET?" Well, those feet are wearing our shoes. Those feet that have angels prostrate before them kissing them; those feet that are firmly planted on the necks of demons; those feet that use death and disease as a footstool are wearing your size 3, 5, 7, 9, or 13s!

This is what the ascension is really all about. Jesus was taken up to heaven "that He might make us partakers of His divine nature-Jesus prayed-that "we may also in heart and mind ascend and continually dwell there with Him."

Nobody but Jesus will ever walk in our shoes. Nobody but our Savior will go to the depths we’ve been. But the fact that Jesus walked in our shoes into the abyss of sin, death, and the grave is only part of the story. He also walked back out on Easter, still wearing our shoes, and was taken up into heaven still having them on. Walking in our shoes where Jesus has taken them is our glorious privilege now.

 That's a glorious privilege we don't, at least I don't, take the fullest advantage of. I too often walk around in my tight, mud crusted, sin caked shoes .More than I should  I plod through my day to day life with shoes that seem nailed to this earth at the mercy of sin, disease, death and the devil when I could be striding through the realms of eternity in the shoes Jesus took to heaven. Much too often I look at every problem, every fear, every sin, every day in shoes soiled by mud, and manure when I could look at them from my heavenly shoes with my feet propped up on my problems, fears, and sins.This has to grieve the heart of God when he sees you and I living so far beneath our privileges.

Isn’t it amazing how greatly perspective affects everything? Don't things look remarkably different depending on whose shoes you're standing in?

In Christ we have a choice. We can look at life standing in the shoes we have on or in the shoes that Jesus ascended into heaven wearing. We can look at life in shoes caked with sin, mired in death, and hounded by the devil, or we can look at life in shoes planted on death's neck, in shoes unsoiled from sin.

Walk a mile in these shoes friend. Try them on like you do those in a store. Walk around in them. Look at your problems, your ailments, your sins while standing in them. Don't things look different from inside these shoes rather than outside, from inside of heaven rather than from outside of heaven? Yes, they do.

The Scripture says that when God looks from heaven at His fierce enemies all He does is laugh. Come to think of it; the picture of sin, death, and the devil all hunched over and scrunched up to form a footstool for my feet is pretty funny. Don’t you agree?

 

Blessings,

John