Hands & Feet

Z has played in the dirt a lot this summer.

Since we are without a bathtub until we return home, this has translated into sponge-bathing a wiggly just-turned-toddler. 

Last night, locked in my lap, Z rested his head against my chest while I began cleaning off a day of hard playing with a damp cloth. I got to his feet, streaked brown and toenails full of Colorado dirt, and began to wash them. 

Then the Spirit moved and another conflicted piece of this momma's heart clicked into place. I could see, a little more, how motherhood & ministry can flow from the same place and what a shame it would be to not understand that.

Jesus bent and washed the feet of the men who had walked beside Him for three years and last night I bent and washed the feet of a little man who has yet to claim three years of life.

And the similarity whipped through me like a mountain-wind and I felt the Holy Spirit say, "You do this in My place."

I am no Jesus, but I am a picture of Him to my son. And the thought that Christ would stoop to wash my one-year-old's feet just breaks me, because you know, I really think He would.

And I don't think that Jesus would care that my son couldn't thank Him yet, or that no one would notice how sacrificial He was being, or that there wasn't a parade thrown in His honor for washing a dirty toddler's feet.

I think His eyes would be bright and He would make Z laugh and He would find joy in showing my son just how much He is loved by the Creator of the universe. So that one day, when Z is old enough, he would turn to Him and say, "I am Yours."

That's when motherhood shakes loose from the trappings of the world and it becomes something sacred. It becomes the business I must be about: being the hands and feet of Jesus to my child and any others that come.

And this fire that was lit thirteen months ago when my Z came small and vulnerable into this world grows a little brighter and burns a little hotter, and Christ graciously refines my glory-hungry heart.

I look down at Z's feet, clean and ready to be slipped into pajamas, and I am so grateful.