Suffering, intimate, loving and serving

Starter Prayer:  "On this holy night of prayer, I would like to 'spend one hour with you,' so you can teach me how I am to let go and how I am to live.  Let me see your loveliness in bread and wine and song and even in the servant's towel."  (From Wondrous Encounters by Richard Rohr)

"Jesus had loved his own in this world, and now wanted to show his love to them unto the end...He took off his cloak, picked up a towel, poured water into a basin, and began to wash their feet."  John 13:1, 4-5

Today we approach the crescendo of God's intention revealed to us in Christ.

When you follow Christ you experience the kind of suffering that breaks open the patina of esteem and power.  (It doesn't matter whether that esteem is self determined or if it is bestowed upon you by some system.  In all cases, Jesus says that wherever we are seen as higher than others we will and must collapse so that we can experience intimacy that is real.)

This intimacy expands from realizing that every aspect of us (even the so-called secret places) is known and loved beyond measure.  Quite often that intimacy reveals a tender place where we are as soiled as the dusty, mud-caked feet of a pedestrian of Jesus' time.

And Jesus serves us, washing the dirtiest cruddiest places of our being

so that

an indelible impression is made upon us

that compels us to do the same for others.

It's not about feet after all, you know!