Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
Mercy, and a Living Hope
The shop is in an alley off the main street, a door and one window, and the sign over it has been repainted so often the letters have gone thick at the edges.
The young man did the job himself, at his kitchen table, with a tube of contact cement and a utility knife and four bar clamps he borrowed from his father. He got the old soles off clean and he says so twice. He put the cement on the sole and on the upper both, gave it longer than it needed, and clamped it down hard, and the sole is on there for the rest of time. The cobbler turns the boot under the lamp, finds the welt, and sees where the cement ran into the stitch channel and dried hard in it.
The quote is ninety-five, and a third of that is the sole. The rest is getting the cement back out of a channel that’s supposed to take thread, and there’s no fast way to do that. The young man asks what he did wrong and then argues with the answer, standing up, wallet already open. He pays it, and he’ll pay again in the spring when the cement lets go in the wet and takes some of the leather with it. He knows most of that while he’s counting it out.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Peter starts in praise, and the reason for it arrives in the same sentence. In his great mercy he has given us new birth, and he gave it through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. A living hope, Peter calls it, hope with a pulse in it, pointed at an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
The cobbler picks the hardened cement out of the stitch channel with an awl, a curl at a time, and lets the curls fall into a small envelope. He writes a line on it in pencil and folds it into the boot before he wraps the pair. The young man carries them out into the alley without opening the envelope. The line in pencil says: out of the welt.
A Prayer to Remember
It’s an old habit, Father, bringing you a record of the days that went well, as though the record settles anything. You gave new birth in great mercy, and I’ve never been able to take a thing like that plain. Break me of paying for what was handed over, and let me say praise be before I’ve worked out how I feel.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
