Scriptures and Pedicures

     With winter breathing its last, women celebrate the end of the cool weather by entering into a ritual that ushers in spring. We wear sandals.  Whether we dig deep into closets to retrieve the sandals that have not seen the light of day since early fall or we march into our favorite shoe store and purchase a new pair of bright and trendy sandals, sandals are the quintessential of spring.

     This year when I exhumed my old friends from their winter hibernation, it wasn’t the sandals that arrested my attention.  Sure they looked a little worn, but it was the condition of my feet that stopped me in my tracks.  What had happened to my tootsies over the winter?  I had showered every day; I had trimmed the nails enough to avert holes in my pantyhose and I had reapplied nail polish for the Christmas party.  Despite this care, they looked as if I had been trudging through the desert all winter in bare feet.  The amount of dry skin that had accumulated made my feet resemble a moonscape.

      Several cracks on each heel ran deep, displaying dark cavernous abysses.  These lay as reminders of the tenderness and bleeding that had prompted a few nights of lotion to lessen the agony.  You’d think that after all the miles these feet had seen that the soles would be worn and smooth but instead they reminded me of dry prairie where thistles and burrs snag and tear.  The calloused layers of skin that had accumulated on the rim stood akin to the jagged and broken walls of Jericho. 

     As I pondered the present condition of my feet I was reminded of a verse I had read in Romans 11:7 (MSG) “The ‘self-interest Israel’ became thick-skinned toward God.”   Just as the neglect of my feet over the winter had resulted in a build up of dead, calloused and rough skin that misshaped my foot, created deep pain and damaged things they came in contact with, so I am at risk of developing a heart that is calloused and thick-skinned toward God.  When my heart becomes thick-skinned I am no longer able to respond to His Spirit’s gentle promptings.  I become self-centered and all the other people I brush up against are detrimentally affected. The ongoing neglect of my feet presented the need for a pedicure, but what about a pedicure for my heart?

     What my thick-skinned feet needed was a long soak in warm water laced with Dead Sea salts.  What my heart needed was a long soak with the Spirit of God laced with His Word.  I needed some uninterrupted time with God.  I realized that if I was going to find the time in my busy schedule to make my feet presentable then I could also find the time to allow the Holy Spirit to soften my heart and to draw me closer to a place of intimacy with Him.  God was waiting for me to respond to His wooing and to draw me back into the dynamic relationship for which I was created.

     The next step to softening my feet is to exfoliate the dead skin. Sometimes all that is needed is a foot peel. This spring the build up is greater and a tough rasp tool or a pumice stone is needed to scrape off the amassed skin. This is the hard work of the Holy Spirit to chip away at the habitual sin in our lives that builds a layer between our heart and God’s.  The deeply engrained selfish attitudes and the learned patterns of relating that reflect our sin nature more than the life God desires come off layer by layer as the Holy Spirit transforms us.  We resound with the Psalmist who prayed, “Who can discern his errors?  Forgive my hidden faults.  Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.” (Psalm 19:12, 13 NIV). 

     Clippers, nippers, files and buffers become the tools for fine tuning.  What tools does God use to fine tune our hearts?  Maybe it’s a good book that we’re reading and God speaks a personal word into our heart.  Maybe it’s a friend who shares of her journey and it’s as if we’re looking into a mirror, catching a glimpse of what God is calling us to do.  Maybe it’s a corrective word spoken by our soul companion who sees a build up of hard skin that has remained unnoticed to us.  Maybe it’s a verse that unexpectantly jumps out at us and shifts our paradigm of how we see Jesus.  No pedicure is complete without such refinement. 

     Having prepared our feet by removing the dead and calloused skin, don’t leave the pedicure chair until we’ve applied lots of moisturizing cream, allowing it to marinate our feet.  Give it time to soak in.  If we slip on our shoes and head back into life before our feet have been able to drink up the lotion, it will just wipe off and make our shoes slippery.  The therapeutic foot balm becomes the final step to bringing our feet back to the tender, soft skin with which we were born.

     This preparation of our hearts to receive the healing balm of God’s Word and His Spirit’s movement in our lives is talked about by Jesus in the Parable of the Sower.  Jesus says, “The one who receives the seed that fell on the good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it.  He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”  (Matthew 13:23 NIV)  When God’s Word, which is balm to our soul, is applied and allowed to soak into our hearts and minds we will be brought back to the place of our first love for Him.  A thick-skinned heart cannot receive and respond in that way.  It is a heart which is supple and attentive to God that is the goal of the Sower.

     If all we do is tend to our feet by having a pedicure once a year, we will not win the battle against calluses. Our feet need daily intervention.  Whether you put lotion on in the morning or at night doesn’t matter.  What flavor of lotion you use doesn’t matter.  What makes the difference is just simply doing it.  

     So it is with our hearts.  We must open our hearts to God so He can fill us with His Word and presence on a daily basis. Spending time in God’s Word with an open heart will create a daily pedicure treatment for your soul.   

     The next time you put on your sandals and you notice the calluses on your feet, do a quick check on the condition of your heart. May we not be like the Israelites, who because of their self-interest became thick-skinned toward God.  Let’s get our feet prepared to be receptive to the Holy Spirit and “fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15 NIV). 

     Pedicure complete.  Daily routine established.  Sandals on.  Who knows what adventure lies ahead this spring.