Yesterday, I was deeply pondering what Jesus chose to do on His last night with His disciples.
Of all the things He could have chosen, Jesus chose to wash their feet.
Our feet can represent so many things:
1. The motion of our journey-where we’ve been and where we are going.
2. The learning to walk- higher than earthly things.
3. The Good News.
4. The lowest part of the body- humility.
5. Authority and victory- as the feet of a warrior were placed on the neck of his defeated enemies.
Those are all true in this moment, as Jesus could have been cleansing and resetting each of those areas,
as he was also demonstrating His love through service.
But there is another connection I began to see in the midst of the season we are living in:
In those days, you would wash your feet after the days work, after the journey you had been on, to get ready for a period of rest. So, to wash and cover your feet in Scripture meant “rest”.
Why, I wondered, would Jesus release rest? He even said to the disciples, “Do you realize what I’ve just done?”
No, Jesus I don’t.
Rest in the evening could certainly be for our reflection, recalibration, and refueling. But, He said every other part of them was clean…except for their feet. Why?
Then, It came to me.
The washing of the feet and the rest of God was PREPARING them for the work that was coming. They were about to have to do life and ministry in a new way. They had learned everything He had taught, but now they were going to have to put it in motion. This was the end of an age.
And their feet were up next. In the morning, they would have to uncover them and move forward.
In fact, we find that to uncover the feet in Scripture means “to go to work”. You will know that Elijah uncovered his feet (He girded up his loins) in order to outrun Ahab. You will also remember that when Ruth came to Boaz, her kinsman redeemer, she uncovered his feet in the middle of the night and lay down to rest there until morning. She was asking him to get up and “go to work” on her behalf so she could be with him in marriage.
Most of the globe is in a forced rest right now, and while many feet are covered, I wonder if this is preparation for tomorrow when a new and different day will emerge and we will be called to go to work for The Lord in ways we have not known.
Not all. But many.
It won’t happen overnight. 40 days… 50 days….there was a process even for the disciples. But, they moved from discipleship to apostleship; from learning to going.
I believe that Jesus’ act of washing feet wasn’t just to reveal service as the humble way of His Kingdom, but to release a rest and a preparation for the new day.
His disciples would soon transition to a time when absolutely everything was different. For forty days after His death, Jesus would demonstrate, in untold ways, His Kingdom to each of them.
We remember that the Israelites WANDERED for 40 days in the wilderness after the first Passover, but Jesus WONDERED these people for 40 days after He fulfilled the feast of Passover.
Soon, the power of God came through the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and His apostolic work in culture commenced when the church was born.
They turned the world upside down.
We are in unprecedented times and I just wonder if as our feet are being forced to rest, He is preparing many feet for His work.
Psalm 91 It tells us that the Lord keeps us from the plague and the perilous pestilence. It promises us that God’s angels will lift us up so that our “feet” won’t be dashed against a stone.
Perhaps, when God’s angelic hosts are keeping us from all these things we face right now, it is not so we can go back to life as it was, but because when we get up and get back to work we are going to finish that verse.
We will be like Nehemiah and the families he enlisted in culture who were rebuilding their cities. It was dirty work.
And if we choose this mission, we will surely run into “…the lion and adder, the young lion and the dragon…”
I will confess I haven’t been in the fray of culture enough to encounter these foes yet. But I have been seeking His face in these days to see what this looks like for me and for my family.
One thing I know….we each will have already have been prepared, as we let the Lord do His work in this covering time and as we don’t refuse the rest and recalibration like Peter did, at first.
And in the midst of going forth and rebuilding in the fray, we will finish becoming like the Word in Psalm 91 and, “will trample [every enemy] under our feet”.
❤️Happy Passover from my family to yours.❤️
Much Love,
Jamie
JSMinistries 