Week 47—Friday 2 Corinthians 11:23-29
Week 47—FRIDAY
2 Corinthians 11:23-29
“NOT A GOD HAS WOUNDS, BUT THOU ALONE”
The God who stooped to serve is the God who is now high over all. The God who was given is the God whose feet we want to kiss. Because God was strong, God dared to be weak. Browning puts it this way:
To herald all that human and Divine
In the weary, happy face of Him, half-God.
Half man, which made the God-part, God the more!
And as Edward Shillito puts it in “Jesus of the Scars”:
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.
No other god can speak to my condition, for no other god was ever in my condition. The God that I see in Jesus was in my condition. God has gone through everything I have to go through. So God’s wounds answer my wounds. Humans, in manufacturing their gods out of their imaginations, had to make their gods strong. If they ever were weak they would betray their earthliness, so they had to be always strong, always victorious.
But only of Jesus could it be said, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded” (John 13:3-5). The consciousness of his greatness—“knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands”—was the secret of his humility—Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. Only the Great can afford to stoop. A famous swami washes his feet in milk, and then passes this milk around to his disciples to drink a pseudo-communion. Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. We are at the feet of the One who washed our feet.
O Lord Christ, you are Lord because you were lowly. You rise high because you stooped low. I adore you for you did not abhor me. I clasp your feet, for you have washed mine. I love you, love you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am girded with a towel—I ask no higher honor.