Today my whole team traveled to the village and washed the feet of the women there. Pastor Sam, a man who has quickly became a great friend and brother, told them about the story in the Bible in John 13 when Jesus washed the feet of His disciples.
I didn’t go.
My heart has been heavy lately. And it’s not simply one thing, it’s the build of it all. Like when you walk in the village, the dryness around you and every fall of your foot causes miniature sandstorms and the dust layers on your feet.
It’s not something you look for, and it’s not something you think to avoid because it’s not something you focus on. It’s just what happens as you teach, travel and testify.
My spiritual feet were dirty when I woke up this morning. And I related a lot to Peter who first struggled with the idea of Jesus stopping so low to serve me – after all, I was supposed to serve others with Him today! And I related a lot to Peter when Jesus said “if you don’t allow me to wash your feet then you will not be able to share life with me.”
“Okay God! Wash my feet, wash my hands, wash my head…” I can picture God laughing like a Father does when His kid says something outrageous and funny.
“But you’re already clean, you only need your feet washed.”
Jesus spent the day washing my feet.
The whole day?!? Were my feet really that dirty?
In a way, yes. Jesus didn’t NEED all day. But He wanted it.
You see the spiritual washing of my feet came in the form of rest.
Rest is a particular concept I’ve been struggling with on the race. But when you are getting your feet washed all you can do is sit in relationship with the one who is doing the washing.
That’s what I did today.
Often the American culture preaches against rest: be productive, be efficient, busyness is a standard to be achieved.
Or they glorify laziness: all I do is Netflix, social media, marathon TV shows and movies.
Rest is this beautiful place that God created back in the Garden. After He spent 6 days crating the world and everything in it, He rested. Did you ever stop to think that man’s first full day alive on this earth was God’s rest day?
We were created to rest with God. To enjoy relationship with Him. Eating with Him, laughing, interacting. And yes, man’s second full day in the world He worked -because we crave meaning in our lives – but God still walked with him in the cool of the day.
God tried to remind us of this in the 10 commandments, the 4th commandment is REST. Keep the sabbath day holy. This doesn’t look like a bunch of rules, but it looks like simply enjoying the Father the first day of the week so we can work FROM rest instead of working to EARN rest.
I’m still working through what this means for me. And I assure you if you want to know more, there are a ton of great resources out there on this topic. But today rest looked like meditation (Soultime app y’all, 10 stars), taking a nap, soaking in worship music, painting, listening to a podcast (I’ll post the link in the comments), and simply hanging out with Jesus in my imagination where He brought heaven to earth and we played and talked and rested while listening to the rain (cause I haven’t seen or heard rain in almost a month and I miss it and He knows that – Cambodia is in the dry season).
