A Mender of Bad Soles

A man knocked on the office door. He asked if we had a pair of shoes for his friend whose shoes were ripped. I went down stairs to meet the girl and looked at her shoes. They were tattered and worn through. Each shoe was in pieces and held together by rope. They went in New Hope and the girl was able to look at the shoes. She came out jumping up and down while wearing a pair of black and white Air Walks and holding two new pairs of socks. She told us she didn’t remember the last time she had a new pair of shoes.

They didn’t ask for anything else. Just the shoes. I watched them as they crossed our parking lot. As I went back upstairs, I could see them all standing admiring her new shoes.

As I reflected on this, I remembered a scene from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. “I am but, as you would say, a cobbler…which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.”

This is what being a catalyst of hope is all about…being a mender of bad souls. For this girl and her friend it only took a few minutes and some new soles.