God on his knees

 

I spoke once, maybe twice that day.

Poured myself out, and what energy remained leaked through the cold metal of the folding chair and pooled on the floor.

I sat towards the back of the room, and I wanted to engage with the next speaker, to let her words seep deep.

But my head hurt, and my feet ached, and my eyelids drooped.

Then one of the clergy members seated at my left rose and knelt in front of me.

She removed my shoes and began to massage my feet.

Awkward.

I wanted to pull them away.

Sit on them.

Hide the deformed and the dry and the dirt of the day.

Smother the smell.

After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

 

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

 

Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

 

“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

 

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

 

“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

 

Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

 

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. ~John 13:5-14 (NIV)

God on His knees.

Spilled Himself on dirty hearts and dusty feet and into deformed lives.

Not to stifle the stench or hide the stains but to resolve them.

Do you understand what I have done for you?

Do you understand what I have done for YOU?

Oh, the depth and breadth of a God bent in humility.

Do we get it?

Can we grasp the love of One who poured Himself out in service and sacrifice?

Who sweat blood and shed blood?

Who dragged a heavy cross through a dusty street?

Whose own feet bear the scars of suffering and selflessness?

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death–even death on a cross! ~Philippians 2:3-8 (NIV)

Very God of Very God.

Made Himself nothing.

Stooped low for the love of us.

Will we do the same for Him?

Stilled by His sacrifice,

Sandy

Pulled from the archives, dusted, and refurbished