Foot Washers - Day 153 Through the Bible

The South Toe River where my daughter was baptized - near Mt. Celo Church

My Meditations on the Readings

A Succession of Kings for Israel and Judah - (1 Kings 15 and 16)  Abijah and Asa in Judah; Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri and Ahab serving from a period of 7 days to 41 years.  Asa, who reigned 41 years, was the only one who did what was right in the eyes of the LORD at any time.  Yet he, too, failed in removing the high places (idol worship) and in a time of danger trusted in the enemy's power rather than in the LORD.  We see God staying true to His Word - as always - this time in destroying the houses of two of the evil kings forever.  The last one mentioned in this reading - Ahab - marries the evil Jezebel.  Their reign of terror lasts for 22 years.  God is still maintaining His loyalty to His covenant with David to keep  a progeny of David on the throne, despite the disloyalty and evil of so many of these men to God, provoking God to anger.  Daniel 2:21:  "God removes kings and raises up kings."

My Lessons and Applications - This is a sordid tale of the history of Israel, God's chosen people and elect nation.  What about my own history?  How have I been disloyal to God?  Am I humble enough to repent, to turn from my sin? Am I like David in his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, where I acknowledge that it was against God?  Do I mourn, fast, confess, repent - turn away from this sin back to God?  Do I lay my soul before God for cleansing as David did in his penitential psalms after this great sin - Psalm 32 and Psalm 51? Am I like Jeroboam clinging to an idolatrous lifestyle that pleases me, only returning to God in times of panic, and then only through disguise?  Am I like the believing Pharisees in yesterday's readings who believed in Jesus but would not confess Him before men for fear of being thrown out of the synagogue?

Foot Washers (John 13: 1-20)  What do we do with the sure knowledge that no matter what happens - the horror, the cruelty, the rejection by those we have loved - that we have come from God and are going to God?  Jesus teaches us this in John 13: "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded...When He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, 'Do you know what I have done to you?  You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.  For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.  Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him.  If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.'"

My Lessons/Applications/Contemplations:  My paternal grandmother died while my mother was pregnant with me. Yet at a spiritual level I feel I know her (after whom I am named) more than I have most of the people I have known in the flesh.  I was told she was known as "a foot-washin' Baptist."  I love that and know it would be a greater honor to have that sobriquet of hers be mine even more than her name that has been passed down to me through at least 4 generations of women on that side of the family.  Friday night I also knelt and washed (massaged with lotion and oils) my dying mother's feet.  (She died Sunday - yesterday - around noon.)  While I realize Christ is teaching us to be humble servants of each other, there is something so spiritually connecting to Him in this humble ritual - especially with those close to us.  May we all regain this legacy of our Savior - to be servants, foot washers, as Christ was - to the glory of God, our Father.