The Shoes Off His Feet
Colossians 3:12 · Titus 3:5 (NIV)
In today’s 1440 news digest, a small act of kindness caught my attention. Earlier this month in Maricopa, Arizona, 18-year-old Jordan Hope stopped for an 80-year-old man crossing a busy road with a walker and shoes that were falling apart.
Jordan took off his own Nike slides and gave them to him.
He helped him collect a prescription, bought peanut M&Ms, and arranged a ride. Then he followed to make sure the man got inside safely. ABC15 reported that his wife had died two weeks earlier. The man told the station he struggles to ask for help.
Jordan explained it simply. "I felt God speak to me to do something nice for someone else," he told ABC15. "You don't know what they're going through."
Psalm 58 asks a hard question of people with power. "Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge people with equity? No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth" (Psalm 58:1-2). David brings his anger straight to GOD. The psalm ends on one sure thing: "surely there is a God who judges the earth" (Psalm 58:11).
The psalm is fierce. David cries out for judgment against those who do harm. His appeal is to GOD, whose justice reaches beyond theirs. Paul later tells believers how to respond to wrong: "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath" (Romans 12:19).
The rulers in the psalm used their hands to harm. A young man used his hands to take off his shoes.
JESUS told a story about power and justice. A judge "neither feared God nor cared what people thought." A widow came to him again and again, asking for justice. He finally gave in just to be rid of her. Then JESUS said, "And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?" (Luke 18:2-7).
That story appears only in Luke. Irenaeus made a list of what Luke alone preserved in Against Heresies (III.14.3). To me, part of that list reads like a roll call of the overlooked: shepherds, the persistent widow, the ten lepers, the tax collector Zacchaeus, the poor man Lazarus at the rich man’s gate. Luke’s Gospel keeps bringing them into view.
Luke also records what John the Baptist told the crowds who asked how to live. "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same" (Luke 3:11).
Paul uses clothing as a picture of the new life. "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience" (Colossians 3:12). The order matters. First comes who we are: chosen, holy, dearly loved. Then comes what we wear. "And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity" (Colossians 3:14).
Where does that kind of kindness come from? Paul answers in his letter to Titus, and he starts with himself. "At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures" (Titus 3:3). Then everything turns. "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy" (Titus 3:4-5). Paul once hunted followers of JESUS. He knew how much mercy it took to reach him.
GOD's kindness appeared first. Ours follows.
Proverbs says, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it" (Proverbs 4:23). Jordan’s response became practical care and a new friendship. Mercy noticed the need, then stayed long enough to help.
It does leave me thinking about how many times I have walked past someone whose shoes were falling apart.
None of us earns HIS mercy by giving. Titus says so plainly. Kindness is what mercy looks like once it reaches the feet. Paul wrote, "The night is nearly over; the day is almost here" (Romans 13:12). On a busy road in Arizona, a little of that day came early.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the one who struggles to ask for help, GOD sees you, and HE sends people across the road.
🙏 To the one crying out for justice day and night, HE hears you, and HE is the Judge of all the earth.
🙏 To the one who thinks mercy must be earned, HIS kindness appeared before you did anything at all.
🙏 To the one who has a little to share today, HE can make a pair of shoes into a friendship.
Grace and Peace.
Sources: ABC15, Maricopa teen gives stranger his shoes; Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.14.3; Psalm 58, NIV; Luke 3 and 18, NIV; Colossians 3, NIV; Titus 3, NIV; Proverbs 4:23, NIV; Romans 12–13, NIV. Scripture quotations: New International Version (NIV).