The Glass Slipper

Recently I had a picture in my mind, of the Prince putting the glass slipper on Cinderella's foot. Immediately this question came to mind, "Is your walk transparent before your Prince?"

As glass is "transparent," and our feet "walk," the glass slipper illustrates the walk of transparency we can have with Jesus, our Prince of Peace. We know that all of our thoughts and actions are already known to Him. Yet, as part of our relationship with Him, He desires that we be open (transparent) with Him and talk to Him about the things on our hearts, even those things that we might prefer to keep to ourselves, such as our deepest feelings, our hurts, temptations, sins and disappointments. As we talk with Him as a Friend, and hear His response, we can then receive His comfort, healing, and encouragement, as He shows us His perspective on what we have shared with Him.

In our story, Cinderella only lost one of the slippers. Sometimes we may be transparent with Jesus in some areas, but not in others. As our relationship with Him grows, he desires to take us to deeper levels of this transparency, leading to more wholeness and stability in our "walk."

Just as shoes protect our feet, transparency with Jesus is a protection for us. Imagine Cinderella walking home from the ball, wearing only one glass slipper. Her walk becomes unbalanced; soon she is limping and feels she might fall. Exposed to dirt, sharp pebbles, and other hurtful objects along her pathway, her foot may get cut and wounded. How safe she would have been, had she been wearing the glass slipper!

Glass is actually made of sand. Often, when walking along a beach, I think of how the thoughts God has toward us outnumber the grains of sand. I find this truth to be mind-boggling, as I consider how I cannot count the sand-grains in even a tiny section of one beach, let alone all the sand on all the beaches and in all the deserts of the world! Add to that all the sand in all the glass in the world, and the volume of sand is unfathomable, just like God's thoughts toward us! As we walk in a life-style of transparency before Jesus, we will become more conscious of His loving thoughts toward us as we commune with Him.

When Cinderella met the Prince at the ball, she must have felt like a new woman. The Prince loved her unconditionally. Dancing with him, she forgot the lying taunts of the wicked step-mother and step-sisters. In his arms, she knew she was destined for something greater than the life she had known. After the ball, however, back in her familiar surroundings, Cinderella may have begun to question the new identity she had found in the Prince, and the hope it had given her. She may have reverted to her old mindset of worthlessness projected onto her by the step-mother and step-sisters.

Suddenly, the Prince is at her door. He has been searching for her throughout the kingdom, trying the glass slipper on all the other maidens. Just as our footprints are unique to ourselves, so, too, is our own transparent walk with Jesus. It doesn't matter how many other people have a transparent walk with Him; He wants the fellowship we, personally, have with Him, that is uniquely ours. He comes searching for us, knocking on our door, desperate to find us and put the glass slipper back on our foot.

The door opened. The Prince entered. When the glass slipper fit, Cinderella was identified as the one whom the Prince longed to marry. Once again, Cinderella knew who she was, her beloved's. Everyone else in the house knew as well, and stepped back, speechless in amazement.

After meeting our Prince, at times we may find we are somehow in a place of having cut off some of our transparency with Him, and may have become vulnerable to stones in the path, which may have wounded us and tried to trip us up. Without our "glass slipper" on, we may have begun to forget who we are and Whose we are, and been tempted to embrace lies we once believed.

Like the Prince that He is, Jesus comes. He kneels before us and washes that foot that may be hurt and bleeding, and bandages it with His nail-scarred hands. He then slips the glass slipper back onto our foot, and restores our identity. Once again, we know we are His, and that we have found true love in His arms. As well, just as it was said of Peter and John, "They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus," when the slipper is back on our foot, others will also see that we are His.

As we know, Cinderella then left her old home behind and married her Prince. As that glass slipper is restored, we can then find the strength to choose to leave the life that once held us captive. Like the Bride in Song of Solomon, we can skip over the mountains with our Bridegroom, who invites us, "Come away with Me, My beloved!"