Sunday Reading: John 13:12-17
Key Verse: John 13:14
14 If then I, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.
Devotion:
Before Jesus sat down to the last super He wanted the disciples to learn and remember a few things; this example was for humility. This is something that seems to be lacking in society nowadays as more and more business people teach others to think of themselves as better than others to gain work, market share, profit and many other things. What this road of action teaches is not respect but greed... people may respect your achievements but they will recognise your greed too. That does not seem to bother those people that do find monetary success through those actions they take.
Christ wanted to teach the disciples that everyone deserves respect from others, not just Him because of the fact that He is Lord but every person that you come across who is not looking for trouble. There are some that come to work against God and to work against you and they are not looking for respect but rather to force themselves upon you; showing them love instead may well help them to recognise what they do.
Christ’s lesson was to show that no matter how great a position one may have in society, there is always room to show love and humility. Christ, as Lord, sat and washed their feet as a servant would. There is no greater than God Himself and yet He chose to wash the disciples’ feet, one of which was going to betray Him later. It is one thing to know this but a totally different thing to carry this out in reality. That is what makes the difference, the doing and not the saying. Christ did this first and then told them why. If we take a leaf from Christ’s pages to do things before we say them then we will not find ourselves in the unfortunate position of having said something that we can no longer do...
Points to Ponder:
Do you say things and not do them?
Are you following Christ’s ways?
