I was talking with a good friend of mine and stumbled across the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. It's a story I've heard many of times but there was one part that really stepped out at me when I reread it the other day.

Quick refresher on what's going on. Jesus is having dinner with the disciples and realizes there's not many days left. In the middle of dinner, Jesus gets up, grabs some water and a cloth, and starts washing all of the disciples' feet. At first, they try and stop him and say their Lord shouldn't be down on his knees cleaning off their dirt. Jesus quickly responds back saying that unless he is able to do this, he isn't their savior. It's a neat story showing Jesus serving everyone else and performing the jobs people consider lowly and unworthy.

The part that caught me recently though was back at the beginning of the chapter in the first verse.

It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.

I had never made that connection. What Jesus considered to be the full extent of his love was not a romantic poem, not a brave act of chivalry, not the giving of some elaborate gift, but rather washing someone's dirty and smelly feet. It's as if all the speeches and parables Jesus explained, all the people he had met with over the last 30 some years were just baby steps, and then Jesus takes it to the final level and washes away some dirt on our feet as the full extent of his love.

What does that tell us about God and his understanding of love, unconditional and everlasting love?

If someone asked me to define love I doubt I would have given washing feet as an answer before. God has a way of doing that whole flip-things-on-their-head type of stuff and it's amazing how often I don't even pick up on it.

I've been doing a lot of thinking over the years about how you show love to those who don't act like they want love or don't reciprocate it back. A lot of us gravitate towards the easy type of love, the kind that is open to receiving it and through such an act, creates a happier environment for both individuals. Perhaps we gravitate at first to this kind of 'easy' love because it's the kind of love most similar to the kind portrayed throughout our society.

But perhaps it's not that the people I find harder to love (the uneasy kind of love) don't want to reciprocate love back to me or receive my love - perhaps it's that they are sick of the love the world is pushing on them. It's their way of saying that the definition for love that our society assigns doesn't cut it, there's something missing from the picture. They're looking for someone to wash their feet.

Maybe that's how we should put flesh to our faith - start washing some feet :)