Wash My Feet

One of the things that I desire is a great marriage. Several years ago, when I whined to the Lord about why it was taking so long for Mr. Right to enter my life, He told me He wanted to give it to me free. Being human, I assumed that it was taking a while for the Lord to get Mr. Right into shape for a great marriage, but it turns out that the Lord has His hands full getting me ready for a great marriage.

In an incident that took place several months ago, I could feel a war going on inside of me, and I knew I was embarking on the next step, but I didn’t know what it was. I got frustrated over a silly little incident with a night light. It was a cheap thing, so I was not surprised that the bulb wasn’t the problem; something was wrong with the unit itself. I live half a mile from a drug store that carries that sort of thing, and I was very much inclined to trot on down to the store and pick up a replacement unit.

But no.

And thus the war.

It seemed very clear to me that the Lord wanted me to express my need to a man, and allow a man to purchase a night light on my behalf. That is okay, but my experience with men leads me to believe he’d say, "You can do that yourself," or that he’d wait a long time to do it. And I could do it myself! This is only a night light. No big deal.

But God uses even night lights to teach me.

It was as I was typing my thoughts and questions into my journal, asking the Lord for answers, that I remembered this passage. Jesus said, "Unless I wash your feet, you have no part in me." Jesus made that statement in response to Peter’s reaction to Jesus’ act of service, which was, "It is not for you to wash my feet!" Later, to the Ephesians, Paul said that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church, and that wives should submit to their husbands, as the church submits to Christ. We tend to think of that as a sort of submission to someone’s rule, but consider Jesus and Peter here. Jesus showed his love by washing Peter’s feet, and it was necessary (and against his natural inclination) for Peter to submit to that.

If ever there is a complaint that a woman is inclined to make, it is that her husband doesn’t really love her. But how many women are willing to wait? Believe me, a night light is a tiny thing, and if I struggle over "submitting" to a man’s "washing my feet" by dealing with that, how much of an internal war must take place over big things?

But unless he invests in us, and we submit to his care, we have no part in him.

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