I Walk Barefoot

The road slices the prairies decisively, granting only one shallow dip and one small rise to crest a rolling hump of grass before it disappears far away into the distant horizon. The blue sky stretches far and wide above me, around me. It is the canvas of God’s painting, and here in this Alberta wilderness, there are no large buildings, no hills, no mountains, no trees to block it out.

In a grassy ditch by the side of the highway is where I choose to walk. A country sidewalk it is, and fit for a queen! The horrific bleats and threatening thunder of a passing train fade away, the few cars whizz past sending gravel spinning, and then – quiet. It fills the land like a living thing.  My eyes feast on beauty. The fields, like a smooth quilted blanket, rest peacefully with the golden stubble of shaven wheat. Somewhere, many miles distant in a hazy horizon which defies the impossible, they merge with the baby blue of sky.

It is beautiful, and yet…. I cannot reconcile it with the confusion in my heart. This show of majesty….and the report I just heard on sex trafficking in Cambodia? My eyes rest on one sole line of dark pines. Like a misplaced scribble on the golden prairie, it points upward to the crescendo of the evening; the explosion of a sun behind billowing clouds. How do I walk under this golden sky and swallow this bitter fact: that there is such beauty in this world, but there is also such a stupendous amount of evil? Why do I still see the eyes of the teenage girl, the eyes that so recently stared at me from the TV screen, when I gaze on the pure blue of heaven? That girl, so used, so abused, then junked. I walk in silence, thoughts all turmoil inside. In desperation, I murmur, “I wish I could be in Heaven – the one place where beauty like this is complete and eternal with nothing to mar it!”

My heels rub against the leather shoes. The wind whips me round, cold and fresh, and I press my hands deeper into my coat pockets. They say these prairies get big winds. I believe it! Here there are no obstacles for King Wind – he may thunder and roar in this vast domain to his heart’s content, and all the humble grasses of Mother Earth will bow in homage. But for now, King Wind is content to tease wisps of hair out of my braids and tickle my cheeks with their scratchy ends.

I draw near to that isolated line of fir trees. They surround a cemetery. Those smooth, cold stones echo eerily my earlier wish  – and each marks a soul that is currently reveling in total beauty  – or drowning in total evil.

Turning to go back, the shoe heel that won’t stop rubbing my foot bites deep. The blister worsens with each step.  I slip the leather offender off and cradle it in my hand. I hardly think twice about walking back to town in my socks. My feet, they are not used to shoes! I am an Africa-child, and I have grown free. The grass stubble pokes through my thin, shy socks, and I feel each pebble. Unexpectedly, my eyes are opened and truth hits me hard: When you walk free, you touch the “real world”. Yes! As the sun dies behind me, kissing my neck and shoulders, I grasp: In Christ, we slipped off these casts our souls were bound in and we are freed from the confining shell of self! My selfish tendency to hide from pain, to cower in the face of cruelty, to shut my ears to the pleas of the despairing and my heart to the broken, my impulse to hide, to distance myself, to run away, to shut it all out – this is impossible in Christ. Only when we are free do we truly feel the pain of the hurt surrounding us in this broken world.

I enter a small prairie town and there are cars passing on the street. My shoeless feet march on the cement sidewalk, along the hedge blazing red with fall, stepping over a child’s spilt popcorn, as I demurely try to appear normal in the eyes of strangers.

But this thought won’t leave me and it shakes me: this unmasking, breaking the cast, this walking free.

Christ went barefoot, and Christ took the nails through His feet.

Jesus knew the pain and sin of this world more intimately than any of us every will, or can! It takes my breath away.  How did I not see this before? And in my heart this resolution forms, hardens, burns:

In Christ, I will walk by the Spirit.

In Christ, I will walk barefoot.

In Christ, I will walk free.

In Christ, I will walk and I will feel and I will be moved with the compassion of Jesus.

This is the way of life abundant. This is bearing my cross, and following Jesus.

This is beauty. This is freedom.

 

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Since coming back to Canada, I’ve had to deal a lot more with the world’s brokenness, as we hear more of the world news and such other reports. This is not the last post on walking barefoot.