shoes?!?

(The pair shown is not the one in discussion.)

The other day I had to throw out some shoes. As I took them out to the trash, I couldn't help but remember the journeys that that pair had been through.

I also couldn't help but remember that saying about shoes. The one about walking a mile in them.

It got me thinking about other shoes' journeys. What places each pair has stood in. What paths each pair has walked through. What problems each pair has ran from.

Plato is quoted to have said:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Those thrown out shoes serves as another reminder of the compassion required in my life. Our shoes maybe new, maybe pretty, maybe cleaned, maybe borrowed, maybe counterfeit, maybe fell off the back of a truck, maybe old, maybe dirty, maybe holey, etc. etc.

Whatever the case, each shoe has seen its day and we need to remember them. If that makes any sense...

Ephesians 4:32.

ashes to ashes...

Nothing lasts forever.

It's a familiar tune that's been played over and over. As I write this, it plays yet again.

Just recently, I found out that a school that I knew about is no more. A little over a decade ago, I visited a small day school for kindergarten aged children in the small village that my mother grew up in. She didn't attend it but a bunch of my cousins did. During my visit, in pseudo-documentary fashion (read: crappy home video), taped the school and its everyday operations.

If memory serves, it was about 10 minutes footage of a walk-through of the building with commentary provided by my cousin and random kids from the village looking into the camera and being overtly hype to be taped. Only that and nothing more.

The other day, my mother gets a phone call and tells me that it's now a shoe factory. When she told me, I felt all kinds of, for lack of a better term at present, weird. As usual the questions started to pour in...

Why did the school fail? Where are the students going now? Why do I care for a school that I didn't even attend? Why a shoe factory? Etc. etc.

In his day, Voltaire once said that Christianity would only last for another 100 years and then fade into obscurity. Plenty of Christian apologists follow that tidbit with the story that following his death, Voltaire's house was turned into a printing house for the Bible. However, no one so far has been able to prove this story. Whether it's true or not, I reference that to mention this verse from a hymn:

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

We have always been told, what begins must end. We've also been told that He is The Beginning and The End.

I end with these questions: What is an eternity? What is forever? What is everlasting?

2012?!?

What up 2012?

Here's to another year of blogging about the joyful, the courageous, the inspiring, the agonizing, the depressing, the horrifying, the frustrating, the enlightening, the hopeful, and the everything else that may happen along the way.

I pray that through each of these forthcoming events I come out better than when I came in, God willing.

Happy New Year!