Checking my Shoes

Earlier this year, I was sitting in school traffic with the kids in a place notorious for people driving up the right lane and cutting in to a LONG queue in the left hand lane right at the last minute. It infuriates me at any time, but particularly when we are running late and we have already been driving for 55 minutes, 15 of which have been in that queue. I remember saying out loud to the kids, “Now, if anyone tries to cut in infront of me, I will be SO angry!”…which was really quite a silly thing to say because it was fairly inevitable and so I was actually just promising that I was going to be angry that morning.

When I got to work, we happened to be working through Ephesians and had arrived at the bit in chapter 6 around armour, and someone expressed that they struggled to understand exactly what “feet being fitted with the readiness that comes from the Gospel of Peace” means. As we discussed this, I realised that I had, that morning, chosen to fit my feet with readiness…a readiness to respond in a certain way should a certain situation present itself. But not the readiness which comes from the Gospel of Peace. I like Paul’s instruction because, in conjunction with the reflection on my traffic altercation that morning, it really points to intentionality in how we interact with different situations in life…to soak ourselves in the Gospel of Peace, to imagine different scenarios which might play out, and so be ready, when those happen, to respond in ways which make for peace.

This morning, I woke up in a foul mood. Not absolutely crippling, but just irritable – and not helped by our dog jumping on my son, and my son screaming like he was being murdered, on what had otherwise been a quiet morning for our neighbours. On the way to church, I reacted to my husband in way which made me realise that I had been READY to hear anything he said as an accusation, not an observation (it wasn’t a pretty reaction :(). On walking across the church parking lot and getting a piece of gravel stuck in my sandal, I remembered that I had even had a dream last night about walking barefoot with my husband and trying to argue that it was OK, even though I had had to stop every few steps to take the painful devil-thorns out of my feet as we walked.

And so I got in to church realising that I needed to do something about this mood. How do we fit our feet with the readiness that comes from the Gospel of Peace when we are just plain ratty? I sat during the worship time knowing that I couldn’t partake in sung worship to God if I wasn’t really serious about the state of my heart.

What came to mind as I sat there was a conversation I had with a “Kingdom-partner-becoming-friend” on Thursday morning. She had been struck around Jesus’ washing of His disciples’ feet. That He had told Peter that, unless He was allowed to wash Peter’s feet, he could have no part in Him. We sat realising that, as activist types, we are so often ready to run into action, but that Jesus has said that, unless we move from a place of Him having ministered to us, we have no part in Him…We are so ready to sing worship to God, to minister to others, to intercede for others, to do the things He calls us to do, to serve Him…but how often are we able to have Him serve us – to minister to us in deeply vulnerable, intimate ways? (If you have never had someone wash you feet before – give it a go and you will understand the vulnerability and intimacy of that action!)

My Kingdom-partner-becoming-friend had had the image of Jesus “massaging the good news into His disciples’ feet” before He sent them out into the world to do His work. This morning, I sat in church asking God to massage His good news into my feet, to help me to walk only when I have had my feet deeply nurtured and healed and fitted with a readiness which comes from HIM, from His good news, from the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

To be honest, I am still in a grotty mood. I am writing this not really knowing what Jesus massaging my feet with His good news looks like in practise for me today. And it is most likely different for each of us. But I do know that He is calling us each in to a place of Him being able to minister to us. And so I share the invitation with you.