Dirty Feet for Christmas!

Dear Jesus,

I washed my feet tonight, which I hate doing because they’re just going to get dirty again (even though the soles of my feet are literally black), and thought of You washing even nastier male feet, knowing they would get dirty again. And I thought about how much humility it would take to serve like that, to get down on hands and knees to do such a simple act, especially when people are watching You and expecting You to do great things.

I saw a cripple in the street today. Dragging his body along the curb with just his arms, begging and covered in dust. He was one of many cripples and many beggars I’ve seen, but I still wanted to close my eyes so that the image wouldn’t be cemented into my mind for days.
...But then I thought there’s no way You would have closed Your eyes. You would have had someone lower him on a mat to You. You would have told him that he was healed. And how it WAS his faith that healed him, because there was no service or good deed he could have physically done.

I came home and my eyes hurt and my throat was sore after just a couple hours of wind blown dust, and I thought about how You were outside in the desert for forty days fasting, just as much human. And You knew Your eyes would hurt and Your skin would burn, but because the Spirit led, You went anyway.

And I wonder if after the twentieth child asking for a “kodo” (gift) passed You, if You still smiled and still said let them come?…and I wonder, if after just seeing Your smile, they felt like they had actually received a “kodo”.  And as I understand a little more of the pressure Martha must have felt in the kitchen, cooking from scratch to feed guests,  I wonder if I would have thought Mary stopping to listen to You was actually more important than my work?

And as I live here, and begin to see how much it really must have stretched that widow to give her only two coins, or realize how protective and loving a shepherd would have to be to pursue one bony sheep when there’s still the never ending flock of 99 going down the road, or glimpse how much You must have treasured people putting there only jackets on the dirt for Your donkey to walk on, the Gospel comes to me with new waves of awe.

SO thanks that even though the Christmas season makes me homesick for my crazy family, I get to celebrate with more insight into what it really means to have “God with us”, starting with my dirty feet.

AMEN!!!