Cinderella Lawnmower

If the shoe fits, put it on fast, because the other one might disappear!

I was getting ready to mow the lawn the other day. We have a box on our back deck with outside shoes. I used to keep an old pair of sneakers in there, just to wear when I mow the lawn. They are old, grass stained and somewhat dorky looking, so I don’t wear them in public, just to do lawn work. I say I used to have them because one sneaker has been missing for most of the summer. Each time I’ve mowed the lawn, I go through the following shoe ritual. I find the one sneaker on the top of the pile. I dig through the rest of the snow boots, rubber boots and about 10 pairs of Angie’s shoe collection overflow. The missing sneaker was nowhere to be found. I end up wearing an old pair of hiking boots for my lawn mowing mission.

On this day, I decide to forgo the missing sneaker scenario, get the hiking boots, and get the job done. This is because I slept in, messed around and it is now 94 degrees outside. I find one hiking boot, emptied the box (I’m pretty good at doing this by now) and behold, there was only one boot! Hopping on one foot while mowing the lawn requires more coordination than I’m capable of. Besides, it might look weird to the neighbors. I was forced to make a decision only a man could make. I looked at my hiking boot, and my one faithful sneaker. The sneaker fit on my left foot and my hiking boot on my right foot. The women of my house were otherwise occupied, so I wore a sneaker on one foot, a hiking boot on the other foot, and I was all set to conquer my lawn.

As the lawnmower and me were making a lap around the landscape, I glanced under one of the trees in my backyard. There was my missing hiking boot (the one that wasn’t currently on my foot)! How in the world did it get across my back yard? I had two theories:
1. The boot got in a fight with the other shoes in the box and decided to stage a walk out (or hike out).
2. A sneaky neighbor dog with too much time on its paws decided to play “Let’s hide the hiking boot.” I’m still waiting for forensic evidence to come back, or maybe I’ve been watching way too much CSI.

I wondered all this as I snagged the boot, tossed it back on the shoe pile, and finished the lawn. A mystery solved, and my dandelions were cut down. Not bad for an afternoons work.

Next, I decided to tackle our overrun blackberry bush which is pretty ambitious for an overheated fat guy in 90 plus degree weather. I went out our back fence behind our property. Two housing developments are getting married back there, so the field is now housing plots with streets. The developer removed most of the blackberries except for the ones behind my back fence. As I hacked and plodded through the underbrush, I saw it, practically hidden by the killer blackberry vines.

My missing tennis shoe! I doubt if my neighbor dog is that ambitious, so I’m sure there is a renegade gang of shoe snatchers lurking in our suburb. I’ll have to check the FBI website.

In Luke 15, Jesus told a parable of a missing tennis shoe and a missing hiking boot. Well, actually, He told about a lost sheep, a coin and a lost son, all of whom are worth more than my tennis shoe and hiking boot. But the truth is the same. There is joy in finding lost stuff. There is greater joy in finding lost people.

If we take the time to look around, there are lost people all around us—folks that have been coming to church and have missed a Sunday or two, or five. We see people sitting in the pews that look sad or lonely, or are hurting. There are people missing from our small groups. We may not know why they are lost; the important thing is finding them, connecting them and reconnecting them to the Lord and His people. It’s all of our jobs to seek the save the lost. If we work together, it’s amazing who we may find.
And beware of sneaky neighbor dogs.