In today’s installment of the Jack’s Winning Ways blog, Jack quoted Oprah Winfrey – “Wealth hasn’t changed who I am. My feet are still on the ground. I’m just wearing better shoes.” (Oprah)
Jack went on to write about his experience as a child of The Great Depression, during which his father would put cardboard in his shoes to cover over the holes that had worn through in them. As I thought about that and the quote it instantly flashed in my mind that there are millions of people in the world today who don’t have shoes of any kind, some not that far way in places like Hatti. My second thought was about the thousands who would love to have to worry about their shoes – those who have lost their feet or legs to things like buried land mines. The further down the chain one goes the more humbling the thoughts become.
One doesn’t have to be wealthy to lose contact with the ground (with the reality of the 
world around us). It is easy to become complacent, one might use the advertising phrase “nose dead”, to the needs that are right in our own back yards. There is not a city, town, or village in America that does not have people living out on the edge. Some are homeless, many are hungry, some are trapped in the world of substance abuse, some have mental problems, but all need help just to survive. Most of the time we do not “see” these people because we choose not to look. We are too busy with our own lives to worry about them. We think, someone else will take care of them. Sometimes that is ground that we choose not to walk upon, because we might get our nice new shoes all dirty.
As Christians, we have an obligation not only to see the need all around us, but also to do something about it. It is not enough to put on our new shoes and go sit in church. It is not enough to put a small portion of our money in the collection plate. If you search your heart for the answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” you would take off your new shoes and go find a homeless person and give them the shoes. For most that is going too far, but at least head in that direction. So, don’t just commiserate with the problem, take some actions. That is the best way to keep yourself grounded in the faith that Jesus was talking about.
Maybe one action that we could all take is to look in our closets and find those 2-3 pairs of shoes that we seldom wear anymore and take them to a donation center of some sort and give them to someone who has no shoes at all. It’s a small step, but a step in the right direction and maybe it gets our feet back on the ground that we should be walking, if we 
want to walk with Jesus.
Look down today and see beyond your new shoes to see if your feet are still on the ground.
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