Feet Washing

It's starting to get hot here. During the day is about the average temperature for a Missouri summer, getting up to 95 degrees fahrenheit (or as they say here, 35 degrees celsius). The streets are dusty and dirty. You work all day, walk down the street if only to get fruit from the market stand, sweat and cool off and sweat again, and by the end of the day are still hot. Electricity here is expensive, and with summer not yet in full swing, we haven't turned on the AC yet. As much as I love every day here, it's getting hot.

Last night I was transported to a literal understanding of biblical times. I got to my room late after coming home from bible study, and was feeling warm. I had just changed my sheets and didn't want to get them dirty, so I decided to wash my feet off. I filled our bucket and sat down on the mat in our bathroom and started rinsing off with cold water.

I think I was taken aback at how much relief I felt.

It was like I was a new person, my fatigue melted away in a way that sleep doesn't bring. It was immediate, refreshing, and exciting. I sat there and talked to Rachel about how washing someone's feet seems so much deeper of an act of service knowing how much comfort it can bring a person. For people in the bible who walked similar dusty streets, here in India you learn better what that relief means.

I ended the evening feeling blessed for the kind of comfort that God can give, both through the resources we're able to have to clean our feet at the end of the day, and through the way he gave Jesus to serve. It makes you more humbled to think of practical small ways that you can share love and comfort with others, and I walk away (haha) from this moment praying for God to always be revealing ways to do that.

- Jenna