What Does Love Look Like?

I was reading this morning in John 13 about when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet.  Knowing who he was, knowing he was God, knowing that the Father had placed all things under his power, knowing that he was about to be betrayed, knowing all these things, he laid aside his outer garments, girded himself with a towel and began washing the dirt off of his disciples’ dusty feet.

As I mused on the passage my mind kept coming back to a story I heard recently from a friend of mine who is a live-in caretaker for the disabled.  My friend told me that she and her then current charge were at odds and she had gone to her room to pray, and not allow her mouth to speak out of what she was feeling, hurt and rejected by the one she served.  Then she heard the elderly woman in the hall bathroom, crying softly.  My friend had to go to her.  She was as always, my friend’s first priority.  She found her charge standing in the bathroom covered in her own feces, tears of shame streaming down her face, helpless to clean herself up, and too ashamed to call the one she had been quarreling with to come and help her.

            “I have lost my dignity!” the lady wailed.

            “Since when does dignity come out of your rear end?” my friend countered.  “Your dignity is up here.”  She tapped her forehead and got to work cleaning up her charge.

            My friend was hurt, feeling rejected, but put aside all of that to love and serve the one God had placed in her life.

            “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34.  As missionary, Heidi Baker teaches, love the One, and then love the one in front of you. That is what Jesus did, even loving Judas who was about to betray him.  Loving Peter, who would deny that he even knew Jesus only hours later, Jesus, the Son of the Living God knelt down and washed Peter's, and Judas' dirty feet.

            Who would you have me love today, Daddy?  Make me ready, armed with knowing who I am to you, ready to serve and stoop down to lift someone else up, to clean up the traffic off of someone’s feet, or the waste of life off of someone’s body, to love as you love.