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When I was a child, I loved my mom’s cooking. She would have an apron on and deliver roast beef to the table. At other times, it was chicken. I can still taste the cut potatoes surrounding the meats. They were half soft and half crispy.
And then there were all of the Italian specialties and she had them down. Lasagna, pastas and unreplicable tomato sauces - you name it.
She fussed over us and worked around the kitchen until she’d collapse into a chair reading the newspaper and invariably nod off from serving us.
Dad would also fall asleep in the chair next to Mom. We called their snoring the “dualing noses.” Their alternating hunks of air seemed to be in perfect rhythm rehearsed from a combined 140 years of servanthood.
I don’t think it dawned on me what I really loved about my mother and father until after their deaths when I became a parent.
Yes, specific duties such as cooking and going off to work was what we noticed. We enjoyed the benefits.
I realized that it was their servanthood that I admired the most. I’ll never again taste Mom’s sauce or sit in Dad’s plumbing truck.
But I take with me their servant nature.
Illustration By Kristiana Laccetti
ABOVE: My spiritual father, Dr. Royal A. Cutler, Jr. washing my feet during a service - although this was his spiritual posture the entire three decades that I knew him.
It was during Passion Week’s Passover meal that Jesus stripped down like a servant and Peter and the others didn’t “get it.” They had seen the work of Jesus and somehow missed his heart.
Like my parents, Jesus went on and left the disciples behind. From the evidence of every Holy-Spirit-inspired fragment of the gospels, it’s clear they got to know servanthood up front and personal.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Jesus’ stripping of his clothes was the metaphor for stripping himself of what man would call the “dignity” of the Godhead. What we all find out is that raising “kids” like us is what Jesus’ ministry was all about. Now, it’s our turn.
Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”…he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him…Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
John 13: 7, 4,5 NIV, Philippians 2:1-4 NIV
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