Mary Beth had not been asked to dinner since she moved West. She knocked on the door. “Come in! Come in! I’m so glad you could make it!,” her host exclaimed. She handed them a bouquet from her backyard.
“Make yourself at home. I’ll go put these in some water and see if dinner is ready.”
There was a familiar smell, one that reminded her of home. It broke through her gruff shell she wore for protection at work. She stepped further into the hall and saw the living room was carpeted and not the cold stone tiles so common here. She wanted to take her shoes off and walk across it, but it was not her house.
They had dinner outside. It was one of her favorite dishes that her mother used to make. Before dessert was served, they wandered back inside to that luxuriously carpeted room. The desire to take off her shoes increased to almost a pain. Her host shook theirs off when they sat on the couch. She took the chance and did the same, resting her toes on the dense shag. As her feet sunk into the carpet, barriers broke down and her true self started finding its way to the surface. Sitting there barefoot, they became true friends. Years later, she wondered why she ever thought it would have been rude to wear shoes in their house.
This story is based on Exodus 2:23-3:10
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
3:1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father,[a] the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
CDPunt(igam) Writes 
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