BAREFOOT – WITHOUT PRIDE

Written by Luz Leigh  28 March 2007
 

       “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”.  The title of a song that Michael W. Smith does well.  The song, written by Paul Simon, is not a new one, but one I have come to listen to, I mean really listen, the past few months.   

       “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” is on a CD that gets played often here in my house.  One reason I love the CD, besides the really inspiring music, is the fact that the artist, Michael W. Smith, is barefoot in three of the photographs in the booklet that accompanied it.

       Barefoot may not speak to many people, but to me it says a lot.   Here is a man who has the means to purchase shoes; shoes of any color, style or price range.  But for his photographs to go along with his music….what shoes does he choose?  None.  This tells me this man is comfortable just being himself.  Or maybe on that particular day, his feet were hurting for some reason.

       Mr. Smith is not putting on airs; not acting like he is better than the rest of us.   He is just being a down to earth kind of fellow.   Don’t you like that in a person?  Somewhere in the Bible we are told to not think too highly of ourselves.

       In Proverbs 16:18 we are told that pride goes before destruction.  Pride can cause a lot of grief; a lot of problems when we allow our worldly egos to look upon ourselves with conceit.    A reasonable or justifiable amount of self-respect, or pride, is a good thing.  It is when we allow the ME in us to take over that pride becomes an unwelcome trait.

       When we do a good deed for a friend or a stranger, it makes us feel good inside.  That is not a bad thing, unless we let it go to our head.   Just help our neighbors in a quiet manner.   It is only necessary for two entities to know about this… ourselves because we helped, and the Lord, who knows all that we do anyway.  It is not even necessary for the neighbor to know who has performed the good deed.

       In Jeremiah the Lord had told the prophet what He would do with the pride of Judah and Jerusalem.  Jeremiah spoke to the people and told them that he would weep in secret because of their pride.   So even back five centuries before Christ was born, God was warning about pride.  In Mark 7 Jesus names the evil things that come from within us and pride is one of the thirteen named.  These should be warnings to us as Christians.

        So now the last song on the CD is playing.  Mr. Smith is singing “All I Want”.  What is it that he wants?  In the words of the song “All I want is You.”  This should be our goal of wanting only Jesus in our lives.