Shoe Repair Receipt Submitted After 20 ...

Shoe Repair Receipt Submitted After 20 Years

Many years ago, the L.A. Times carried a story about a man who went to the house where he grew up and knocked on the door. It had been 20 years since he lived there, so he grew a little sentimental. He asked the current owners if he could walk through the house, and they let him.

While in the attic, he found an old jacket of his. He put it on, reached into the pocket, and pulled out a stub. It was a receipt from a shoe repair shop. He remembered that he had taken a pair of shoes there twenty years ago, and in the midst of the move, he had never picked them up.

So on a whim, he decided to go to the shoe repair shop, and just to be funny, he took out the receipt and handed it to the guy behind the desk, saying, “Are my shoes ready?”

The guy went back to the workroom for a minute, came back to the counter, and said, “Come back a week from Thursday.” (John Ortberg, in his sermon “Intercepting Entropy,” Preaching Today Audio, Issue #295; www.PreachingToday.com)

From a sermon by C. Philip Green, Anticipating Advent -- Part III, 12/19/2009