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A Rock
in My Shoe
By Don H. Staheli
Pausing on the sidewalk, I struggled
to keep my balance while posing like a flamingo in a one-legged
stance. There was no place handy to sit down, so I was trying to
stand on my left foot with the other foot raised so I could untie
my right shoe. This unnatural posture was only maintained through
a constant shifting of weight and an occasional hop on one foot
to recover my equilibrium. I think humans are not pre-programmed
to bend over and take off a shoe while perching on the opposite
foot.
All of these gyrations were necessary
in my exploration for the boulder that had somehow worked its way
into my shoe and was making each stride an exercise in great discomfort.
How could such a huge piece of granite have gained access to the
bottom of my wing tipped footwear without me noticing the unseen
hand that had placed it there, or sensing it as it rolled in through
the same entry point occupied snugly by my foot?
Perhaps it was assimilated in some
unknown way through the sole, just worming its way in until it nearly
pierced the tender part of my instep. Regardless of how it came
to get in, it was huge and now causing great pain and making it
impossible to walk another step. Thus, the necessity of stopping
here now to fidget with the shoelace, take off the shoe and remove
the offending hunk of gravel.
When the shoe was finally removed,
I could stand, one shoe off and one shoe on with stockinged foot
on the cement, and search for the rock. I turned the shoe upside
down and shook it. Nothing fell out. Where was the boulder? I inserted
my hand into the leather-lined cavity beneath the laces and felt
around carefully. I couldn’t feel a thing of any substance until,
hold on, there seemed to be something lodged in the soft insole.
More probing yielded a tiny grain of aggregate not bigger than a
few combined particles of sand. The boulder was nowhere to be found
— just this little pebble. What seemed like a rock big enough to
cripple an elephant was only a minuscule morsel of stone. How could
such a tiny thing stop a hulking man in his tracks?
It doesn’t take much to slow us down
or even bring us to a halt. Goliath (though the stone was not in
his shoe, but in his forehead!) learned this lesson from a young
David. The progress of even the most powerful and promising can
be brought up short with the introduction of just a small amount
of foreign material in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sin will have this effect upon us in
a profound way. It will slow us down even more quickly than a pebble
in our shoe. A small amount of sin, not much in comparison with
all the good which we account to ourselves, can make it painful
to keep going or can stop our positive movement all together. It
doesn’t seem to matter how big we are, or how important, or how
well developed our spiritual musculature, the gravel of evil and
the grit of sin, if they get in where they don’t belong, will create
enough hurt to stop even the best of us.
When that happens, we must pause in
our efforts, get our balance, bend or even better kneel down, loosen
up a bit and remove the offending source of spiritual pain. When
we have done so, sometimes with the help of others and always with
the help of the Savior, we’ll be able to tie life back on like a
comfortable shoe and stride off to meet whatever the hard-packed
pathway of mortality might bring to us.
If we again, and we will, pick up a
sinstone, the well-practiced process of removal will work every
time to get us comfortably under way. There is nothing like a clean
shoe or a clear conscience to make our walk a little easier.
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© 2001 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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