Every time I come inside I can still hear my mother’s voice. “Wipe your feet.” In some cultures, you don’t just wipe your feet but remove your shoes. The world is a dirty, messy place, and it is easy to track in all sorts of things on your shoes. In fact, studies show removing your shoes at the doormat can reduce the dust in your home tremendously. Doormats are designed to scrape the dirt from our feet.
Being a doormat has negative connotations – it means people are walking all over you. But, I see Christ as our doormat. By His sacrifice on the cross, He cleanses us of our sins before we can enter into the Father’s presence. God doesn’t want us to track in any of our sins, otherwise we couldn’t stand before Him as pure and holy. Is it any coincidence that Jeus washed his disciples feet?
I wonder how many of us pick up that dirty sin and carry it back with us after we rise from our knees? It’s that act or thought we still want to mull over. Maybe it’s because we want to feel sorry for ourselves. Could it be we want to stay mad at that person who wronged us? Perhaps it’s because we think we have not “done” enough on our own to make up for the sin so we want to carry it around a bit more as a reminder that we are unworthy.
Fellow flock, to pickup our sins and carry them back hurts not just us and our faith walk, but other Christians around us, and especially those who are not yet Christians – you know the ones. They are the ones we work with, or who think they know us too well and are waiting for us to slip up. “This Christ of hers hasn’t really changed her. It’s all an act, a phase. She’ll come down from the clouds soon enough.”
Listen to what the LORD said through the prophet Ezekiel to His people –
As for you, my flock, thus says the LORD God: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet?
Ezekiel 34:17-18
It doesn’t take much dirt to muddy clear water does it? I see the pastures as God’s provisions and blessings, and the water as the living water for which all souls thirst. By not forgiving ourselves or feeling we have not “done enough” to make up for our sins, we trample what God gives us, in order to bless us or provide for us. We are pushing back His present, and His presence in our lives and saying it can’t be for us. Likewise, by carrying back anger, grudges or hurts into the world, we have muddied the water for which all thirst to have, not only for ourselves, but for others we are to share it with as well.
Dear God, Oh, how “we like sheep have gone astray”! (Isaiah 53:6 ) Forgive me for my muddied feet which trample your blessings in my life and spoil my helping others who thirst for You to see You more clearly at work in me. Amen
