Bloomin' Shoes

Apparently the average shoe takes 1,000 years to biodegrade in a landfill.  Imagine the horrible consequences that will have on future generations.  Picture the massive piles of shoes people in the future will be wading through.  They’ll be in shoes up to their noses.  And I don’t know when the last time you held an old shoe up to your nose was, but I for one am not envisioning, or dare I say smelling, good times in this dystopian shoe-filled future.

 Rest easy though, there’s at least one company trying to save us from this nasty Nike filled post-apocalyptic fate, and I’m not talking about Dr. Scholl’s.

Oat Shoes is a shoe company based in the Netherlands and Belgium, and they have come up with biodegradable shoes with flower seeds in them.  That’s right when your pair of shoes die, you can give them a little shoe funeral, bury them in your backyard, and a few day later they’ll sprout flowers.  I think the future’s odor problem is taken care of on this one. Whew!

In a lot of ways, Oat shoes remind me of Paul quoting Isaiah, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Romans 10:15), and Jesus comparing the good news to seeds that are spread out upon various kinds of soil. (Luke 8:5-15)  Just like those non-degradable shoes, if there is no seed in us, we’ll just hang around stinkin’ up the place, but if we are biodegradable with seed in us, we need to die to ourselves and be buried in Christ in order to bring forth fruit. 

So don’t bother trying to make your feet beautiful by buying some super expensive, biodegradable flower shoes to bury in the backyard, make your feet beautiful by dying to self and taking the good news out into the world for the sake of Jesus Christ.