Day 23:
What I strive for...and rarely live up to comes from John chapter 13 verses 1-17. It is in the Upper Room, The Last Supper, and Jesus is giving his last instructions to his disciples.
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come form God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?"
Jesus answered him, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterwards you will understand."
Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet."
Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no share with me."
Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and head!"
Jesus said to him, "The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you." For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, "Not all of you are clean."
When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, "Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also out to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just I have done to you. Truly, truly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them."
Jesus, God on earth, not only knelt down and did the work of a slave (washing traveler's feet was the work for slaves), but also washed the feet of the one he knew had betrayed him. In other words, no job is beneath us, no person (even those who have wronged us) are beneath us.
It is my goal to live like this, and I am sure I fail, I know that I fail often. The difference you can make is understanding this and trying to do better each day.
Challenge: Do something for someone who could never repay you.
