Story of the shoe maker

Once in a town, there was a shoe maker. He would make his shoes while chanting God’s name. And whenever he would go to sell his shoes in the market, he would tell everybody, “Look, by God’s Grace, I bought the leather for one Euro. I bought the nails for a few cents and all together the shoes cost five Euros. I will make a profit of two Euros, by God’s Grace.” He was very sincere. And with everything that he did, his mind was always centred on God. He accepted everything as God’s Grace. The people around him saw this innocence and this love he had for God and they would buy the shoes without any bargaining.

So it happened one night, he could not sleep. While he was sitting in his courtyard, a group of robbers came by, and they kidnapped him. They then went to rob another house. When the owner of this house heard noises, the thieves ran away and left the shoe maker behind with all the jewellery they had robbed. The homeowner saw this innocent shoe maker with all of his belongings and said, “It’s impossible!” But since the shoe maker had all the jewellery on him, the homeowner had doubts in his mind, and said, “Let me call the police.”

The police came and put the shoemaker in prison. The next day he was brought in front of the judge, there the shoemaker said, “By the Grace of God yesterday night I could not sleep. By the Grace of God I was sitting outside of my house. And by the Grace of God some robbers came and kidnapped me. By the Grace of God this man found me. By the Grace of God he thought that I came to steal from him. And by the Grace of God I am here.”Seeing the innocence in the shoe maker, the judge said, “This man is not the one who stole, he has spoken the truth.” While coming out of the court, the shoemaker said to his friend, “It is by the Grace of God that I was freed.” This shows that very often we take everything for granted. We forget that behind all our actions, behind all that is happening is God’s Grace. If we start seeing it in this way, we’ll be happy and we will find peace in everything. Even the worst of things that might come in one’s life, we will see it in a different way.