Washing God's Feet

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash.

Every scrap of experience has value. Every shred of every encounter with every soul teaches us. Those interactions write on our hearts, change us, and move us along our path.

Late one November evening, I entered an exam room to find a cold, wet, disheveled patient resting on a gurney. His clothes were soiled and torn, his hair and beard were long and unkempt. He’d struggled with addictions and appeared ten years older than his stated age. Through the holes in his shoes, I saw holes in his socks. His feet were blistered and swollen.

I filled a washbasin with tepid water. I sat at the foot of his gurney and removed his tattered shoes and socks. I squirted soap on a washcloth and gently cleaned layers of the city from his homeless feet.

Miraculously, as I washed his feet, everything earthly or temporal was drawn aside, I saw only that portion of him that was divine. He had neither possessions nor the esteem of the world, but I saw in him the glorious and indescribable nobility of every soul who suffers. I saw God.

As I served my wayfarer, I realized he’d come to minister to me, to teach me without saying a word.

I’ve viewed every soul differently since that day. We’re always next to God, whether sitting in church or the gutter. That’s who the person next to us is. Often, the hardest place to see God is in the mirror, but that’s who we are.

Edwin McNeill Poteat caught the essence of empathy in a few short lines: “He cannot heal who has not suffered much | For only sorrow, sorrow understands: | They will not come for healing at our touch | Who have not seen the scars upon our hands.”

My visitor lived on the fringe of society, the antithesis of everything the world defines as success, yet he was divine. If he did nothing with his entire life except give me that gift of understanding, he was a profound success. Later, as I thought about washing his feet, I wept.

“The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister” ( Matt. 20:28). That’s what He did for me when He visited me as a homeless man. We are all here to minister to one another.