Many of you commented yesterday after the sermon about the mental image of my mother wearing her apron with a towel tucked into the waistband. The image seemed to resonate with the understanding of our call to take up the towel in serving one another. There is something beautiful about my mother being comfortable in her skin. She was like the Biblical character Martha in the best sense of the word. The towel wasn't forced upon her. She chose to add it to her many, many colorful (and flamboyant) aprons.
Others expressed how difficult it was to feel that bearing the towel was unappreciated by those that you loved the most. There was a lot of pain expressed when the towel seemed forced rather than picked up out of love. Sometimes our ideas of servanthood are skewed because our image of God is distorted.
When I think of the cross, it is easy to see Jesus as the bridge between humankind and God-- a substitutionary sacrifice. If we are honest, we often add to the last sentence -- to appease an angry God. I think of the work of the cross as the bridge, not appeasing the angry God-- but a bridge that helps our hearts to be open the grace of God. It's our hearts that need to be changed, not God's. When Jesus picked up the towel, he did it out of love, pure unadulterated love.
On the journey,
Alecia
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sometimes you pick up the towel out of love, but after a while would like to lay it back down and can't. It seems like to truly understand how deep love can be, you have to face that desire to lay down the towel and understand why you don't.
ReplyDeleteThat preaches.
ReplyDelete