Bare Feet

BARE FEET

On my trip back to Illinois this week, “purportedly” to celebrate the fourth of July, 2015, which would be better spent celebrating the Kingdom of God, Wink, my aunt Joan McCulley, and I trekked to the Amish country in Arthur, Illinois, as is our habit on trips up north, where I was born and raised. We went to shop at Beachy’s, an Amish grocery store, and at another Amish Salvage Store, and I purchased some tools at an Amish tool store to help replace some that were stolen…etc.

 
This reflection is not about buying things, food, tools, or whatever one needs. This reflection is about bare feet. Bare feet, lightning bugs, corn and soybeans growing silently, horses hooves clock, clocking along the road, Amish believers in peace and nonviolence, and a God who loves. That is what this reflection is about, a portrayal of the Kingdom of God…..and bare feet.

 
It is about little girls, young women, little boys, all in touch with God’s beautiful creation, dressed in pale blue, a peaceful color, silently walking on God’s earth with bare feet. I see no reason men cannot participate in bare feet, shod in the Gospel of Peace…

 
When is the last time you saw people walking with bare feet? When is the last time you walked with bare feet, with mud and perhaps horse or cow manure squishing up between your toes? Bare feet….. I used to do it. You can do it too….. Bare feet touching God’s green earth, bare feet touching the bicycle pedal as I witnessed today a young Amish girl of 8 or 9 years old, riding her bicycle to the Amish grocery store with a little wagon behind to purchase some needed goods from the store for her family an haul it back, in bare feet, we smiled at each other, knowingly, believing in my imagination, and hopefully in hers, that God is in us, in all creation, and the Kingdom of God is coming, hopefully soon, very soon.

 
Bare feet, a family in line at the grocery store, all excepting the male, (whom I am certain was working,) mother in shoes, four or five little girls in line behind her, all in bare feet.

 
Given that there is a God in heaven, a God who loves all mankind and all his creation, I really and truly believe we all need to get out of our fine clothes, suits and ties, military uniforms, shoes and such pretentious “adornment” and get down to bare feet with each other, touching each other, smiling at each other, looking each other in the eye, letting our bare feet feel the earth God gave us all to dress and to keep.

 
Do some walking together with each other, friends and enemies, in bare feet. It is good, it is good for the soul to walk on bare feet!

Grace & Peace,

John Cooper