This is really strange! mumbled...
Illustration
"This is really strange!" mumbled one of the adolescent boys, as he stripped off his shoes and socks and plunked his bare feet into the mountain stream by which we all were seated. Another youth murmured questioningly, "Isn't this sort of humiliating for you?" She pulled her feet from the stream and slipped them into the towel one of our youth advisors held ready. Our church youth group, its advisors, and I had spent the day hiking an extended portion of the Appalachian Trail in south-
central Pennsylvania. As we finished the evening meal around the campfire, I asked the youth to be seated along the bank of the nearby creek, and to remove shoes and socks in preparation for a "lifetime Bible lesson," as they later called it. The adult advisors and I had pulled towels from our personal backpacks, and used them to dry the feet of the youth, once we had bathed their feet in the stream. Throughout the process, we encouraged silence as we "humiliated" ourselves as leaders before the youth. When we had finished washing and drying the feet of our young people, one of the advisors read the biblical text from the Johannine account of the gospel. During the reading, I washed the feet of the adult advisors. There was complete silence, save the words of scripture and the bubbling of the little stream as its waters slipped by. The youth are grown now, some with children of their own, but they did not forget those "strange" moments by the Pennsylvania stream. Jesus asked (and continues to ask): "Do you understand what I have done for you?" -- Saxon
central Pennsylvania. As we finished the evening meal around the campfire, I asked the youth to be seated along the bank of the nearby creek, and to remove shoes and socks in preparation for a "lifetime Bible lesson," as they later called it. The adult advisors and I had pulled towels from our personal backpacks, and used them to dry the feet of the youth, once we had bathed their feet in the stream. Throughout the process, we encouraged silence as we "humiliated" ourselves as leaders before the youth. When we had finished washing and drying the feet of our young people, one of the advisors read the biblical text from the Johannine account of the gospel. During the reading, I washed the feet of the adult advisors. There was complete silence, save the words of scripture and the bubbling of the little stream as its waters slipped by. The youth are grown now, some with children of their own, but they did not forget those "strange" moments by the Pennsylvania stream. Jesus asked (and continues to ask): "Do you understand what I have done for you?" -- Saxon
