Maybe the only way to keep from drowning in just how heavy life is is to kneel down and curl up in His arms and just let yourself be held.
It's easy to write but hard to do. Because me, I want to fix things. I want to come out swinging and just knock my hurt into next week.
I'm tired, but I don't want to rest.
I went for a walk. I was giving up, resigned to be hopeless, when I saw it.
I nearly stepped on it, the cross. It wasn't hanging from a silver chain or mounted on the wall or plastered across an ornate mural.
It was just two thin twigs lying in the dirt.
The thought hit me, that maybe the cross was found looking low. Looking in the dirt, in the uneventful, in the ignored.
It's both humorous and utterly frustrating how we always miss the things right under our noses.
I'd read it in John 13 a million times.
Jesus knows that the clock is ticking on His earthly ministry, and as He looks around at the disciples gathered to eat, I can't help but wonder if He pictures what He knows is coming. If He hears Peter's denial ringing in His ears. If He sees Judas with the mob at his back. If He looks at John and sees the disciple He loves sitting with His mother at the foot of the cross.
"Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper." (v. 3)
He grabs a bowl of water and a towel and kneels in front of these 12 men that He'd spent years pouring into and begins to wash their feet.
We can guess how that felt by Peter's words, "You shall never wash my feet." This isn't defiance. Peter knows who Jesus is. He'd confessed earlier that he was certain that Jesus was the Son of God. Peter had watched Him heal the sick, bring the dead to life, cast out demons.
Peter was notorious for speaking and acting rashly, but he knew the truth.
He knew that this Jesus was way too big, too holy, too powerful, too more to kneel in front of him and touch his feet.
He knew that his feet were too grimy, too filthy, too unworthy, too terribly human to be touched by this God he loved.
See, Peter was faced with the same thing we are: in the face of a perfect God our heart becomes painfully aware of just how low we are.
God is light, and light illuminates everything- yes, everything. The more we see Him, the more we see ourselves, and it's not a pretty picture.
John Piper once described it as stepping into the sun only to realize that the precious broach that we've kept so close to our heart is revealed to be nothing but a disgusting roach.
Our righteousness is filthy rags to Him and the thought of such perfection touching such depravity is, if we think about it, offensive.
When we imagine Him kneeling before us, we're right to echo Peter. How can He do that? How can that be okay? How dare depravity and perfection meet?
Jesus knows that the clock is ticking on His earthly ministry, and as He looks around at the disciples gathered to eat, I can't help but wonder if He pictures what He knows is coming. If He hears Peter's denial ringing in His ears. If He sees Judas with the mob at his back. If He looks at John and sees the disciple He loves sitting with His mother at the foot of the cross.
"Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper." (v. 3)
He grabs a bowl of water and a towel and kneels in front of these 12 men that He'd spent years pouring into and begins to wash their feet.
We can guess how that felt by Peter's words, "You shall never wash my feet." This isn't defiance. Peter knows who Jesus is. He'd confessed earlier that he was certain that Jesus was the Son of God. Peter had watched Him heal the sick, bring the dead to life, cast out demons.
Peter was notorious for speaking and acting rashly, but he knew the truth.
He knew that this Jesus was way too big, too holy, too powerful, too more to kneel in front of him and touch his feet.
He knew that his feet were too grimy, too filthy, too unworthy, too terribly human to be touched by this God he loved.
See, Peter was faced with the same thing we are: in the face of a perfect God our heart becomes painfully aware of just how low we are.
God is light, and light illuminates everything- yes, everything. The more we see Him, the more we see ourselves, and it's not a pretty picture.
John Piper once described it as stepping into the sun only to realize that the precious broach that we've kept so close to our heart is revealed to be nothing but a disgusting roach.
Our righteousness is filthy rags to Him and the thought of such perfection touching such depravity is, if we think about it, offensive.
When we imagine Him kneeling before us, we're right to echo Peter. How can He do that? How can that be okay? How dare depravity and perfection meet?
I find myself continually caught up in the utter strangeness of it all. Where pride is one end of the spectrum, the opposite extreme is equally distressing. Don't touch us, God, we're too dirty. You're too good for us.
And yet, when my face was stuck searching the sky for some justification to this offensive Gospel, I looked down. Where a month before a cross had been at my feet, this time I looked down from the balcony to see Jesus kneeling in the garden of Gethsemane.
True, this Jesus was a little kid in sneakers and the garden was made of fake potted plants they had pulled on stage as props, but the story it represented was striking.
He was praying for us. A few chapters later in John 17, in the middle of the darkest night in history, human anxiety so powerful that He sweated blood, Jesus knelt again, praying for our courage and safety.
Again and again I see Him kneeling and my heart begs for the answer to the question. Why? How could He stoop so low?
I'll let you in on a strange secret I've learned recently;
when we're searching for answers...the answer is Him. It's always Him.
And I know it sounds cheesy and it sounds too simple but if there's one thing I believe to my core, one thing I'll stake my life on, it's that He is the only answer to that thing you're searching for- and everybody is searching.
It's that itch in the center of you that drives some to be rich and some to be poor and some to buy expensive cars and some to date as many people as they can find. It's that thing that makes you feel lonely in a crowded room and that feeling you get when you see beautiful things.
If you only read one thing in this whole post, read this: That thing you're chasing, that thing you're looking for, it can be found. And His name is Jesus.
And this Jesus is the One that kneels at your feet and says, "I love you in the midst of your mess and I will not leave you in your mess. I am not afraid of your dirtiness, and I will make you cleaner than you ever thought you could be. I don't ask you to wash your own feet or pay me to heal you. You can't fix yourself and all the money in the world cannot touch this lifelong build up of filth.
The good news, though, is that I am entirely, perfectly clean, and I'll take your dirt on myself. I will make myself filthy so you can be clean, and if I choose to make you new then nothing in all existence can stop me. Let me love you."
Because this perfect, holy, gigantic God dares stoop to clean my feet, there is hope for me.
As much as I try, I can't make myself good. I can't make God love me. I can't pay God back for all He's done for me. He is good regardless of me, and thankfully His love is not dependent on mine.
So when you're overwhelmed by your sin and by this world, look at Him. He's waiting patiently and He'll save powerfully. He paid the ultimate price so that He could love you until it hurts-and then keep loving you for all eternity.
So come home. Be loved. Be welcomed as a child. Let Him lavish His scandalous grace on you and He will hold you close.
"I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."-Ezekiel 37:26-27
(The underlined links are scripture references, by the way.)
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