Cave Feet

“Come again?”  I felt a puzzled frown crossing my face, and I tried to make it go away by putting on my best questioning look.

“You have what we like to call ‘cave feet,’” the saleswoman repeated.  “Your arches are so incredibly high that when you’re standing flat footed, I can see under your arches from one side to the other – like a little cave.”  She smiled as if this was a fun idiosyncrasy to have, the kind people would find interesting and exciting.  “Not only that,” she continued with more good news, “you have a very high instep; so yeah, you have kind of an unusual foot.”

Marvelous, I thought to myself.  I could see very expensive but sensible shoes in my future.  The unbidden frown was wrinkling my forehead again.

“Ah, don’t you worry,” she said.  “I have a pair of shoes for you to try on that you’re going to think are super cute.”

When she pulled them out of the box, I wasn’t so sure.  They were a shimmery sort of dark green.  I had not entered the store with green shoes in mind; but as she slipped them onto my feet, I had to admire the way the leather overlapped as it tapered towards the toe, cleverly making my wide foot look slender.  I stood and felt the cushiony goodness envelope my feet.  

I also heard a murmur of delight from the lady next to me.  “Those shoes look so cute on you,” she bubbled, “and green goes with everything.  I had a pair of green shoes in high school, and they were my favorites.  I wore them more than any other shoes.”

I took a little walk around the store, and soon the other salespeople and customers were admiring my cave feet or rather the shoes covering them.  In the background I could hear my salesgirl continuing to describe the virtues of the shoes.  “They have the illusion of a high heel, but as you can see, and feel, the heel really isn’t that high; and like this lady over here said, green goes with absolutely everything: khaki, black, brown, tan, navy blue, absolutely everything.”

I really wasn’t listening, I was staring down at my charming feet and knowing that one pair of shimmery, dark green shoes were going home with me.

My poor feet may make little caves, but nobody will notice from now on because I will have covered them with beautiful shoes – sort of like a Christian who has been covered in Christ’s righteousness.

In Philippians 3 Paul declares that he has no righteousness of his own. Only through faith in Christ can we be made perfect.  In verse 21 we are promised that our Savior “will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.”

Ah, and so my new shoes have a lesson.  On my own, my feet are an oddity at best.  On my own, my righteousness is like filthy rags, but God will transform me into something of beauty with His righteousness.

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