serving and loving your own
The empty suitcase lay open on the floor and loads of laundry spilled over the baskets piled next to the bed. In the dark hours of the following morning, I’d be boarding a plane and my to-do list was a mile long.
“Mommy, now that sister’s napping, let’s paint our nails.”
She’d been occupying herself for at least ten minutes setting up a makeshift salon in the middle of my bathroom. A little plastic chair drug in from the backyard, a stool for me to sit on, and a large bowl to soak her tiny feet.
She was preparing for a royal ball.
I needed to pack for a trip.
“Honey, Mommy doesn’t have time to paint your nails. Mommy has a lot to do while sister naps.”
It’s what I wanted to say. It was true.
But a tugging at my heart pulled the reigns on my tongue and re-directed me to the top of my closet where I keep the box of nail polish.
“I want red on this toe, this toe, and this toe… and I want purple this one and this one. And on the other foot I want…”
The instructions were specific. Great detail was going into this nail salon experience, and as I stooped down to wash her little feet in the plastic bowl of bubbles, John 13 came to mind.
“It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end…so he got up from the meal… he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet…”
Jesus was a busy man, but this was it. His last meal with his disciples before prophecy would be fulfilled and his body would be hung on the cross for the sins of the world. There was much he could’ve done. There’s always something to be done, anyways, isn’t there?
But he stopped and he stooped and he washed the feet of those he loved. He devoted precious time to each of them, serving them, because he loved them. Loved them to the end.
Friend, I know there is so much to do. There is laundry to wash, meals to cook, groceries to buy, errands to run, appointments to make, floors to be mopped, and dishwashers to be unloaded.
But more importantly, there are people to be loved.
And if we want to love our own as Jesus loved his own, we follow his example. We pause. We give them our attention. We put our own agendas aside. We serve them. And we do it even when it’s not convenient.
Ten minutes later, she flipped through the pages of a magazine while her polish dried. And you know what? I got all the laundry folded, I packed my suitcase, and I went to bed that night thanking God for giving me the precious opportunity to serve and love on one of my own.
