Heart Water

Luke 7:38 -- "Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them."

Stop and go traffic tends to bring out the motion sick in me.  Even when I'm the one driving. So as I put foot to break petal AGAIN, I concentrate on the words of Martina McBride blaring through my stereo speakers. And I belt them out at the top of my lungs - "she'll be wearin' white".

I can't help but smile big because so much of this particular song hits home. My groom, much like the one in the song, ignored everything I was before he and I exchanged vows. My divorce and all the little nasty details pertaining therein did not register on Steven's radar. And while I didn't EXACTLY wear white to my second wedding - I didn't wear true white to my first one, either. The reason isn't what you think it is -- I don't look good in white.  I just don't. It makes me look like a leukemia patient. So on BOTH occasions [let's face it, I don't really count the first one...it doesn't exist anymore] I chose champagne over true white. But the point here is: I could've worn true white when Steven married me. Like the bride groom in Martina's song -- Steven loves me, looks at me in a way that I will never understand - in a way that makes me FEEL like I actually deserve to wear white [even though, getting down to brass tacks, no human does.]

The woman in Luke 7 approached Jesus adorned in the color that society and her own guilt had draped around her. Dark, stained with an accumulation of past sins and more than a little thread-bare. Weeping, on her knees, she totally humbled herself before the Lord. She did the unthinkable. She washed his feet in her own tears and some very expensive perfume. And while most of us are familiar with this story - we've all conjured up mental images of this shunned woman at the feet of Jesus Christ - I want to zero in on a detail that might frequently be overlooked.

She dried his feet with her hair.

Her hair!!

First - in her culture and society, women just DID NOT let their hair down. It was considered shameful. [which makes me think all men back then had a hair fetish, but I digress]. This strikes out at me for so many reasons - not the least of which is that this woman was overrun with grief, pouring out her heart water - her tears - at the foot of our Savior - she acted in a very humble and passionate manner. Her sole focus at that moment was Jesus. Not those around her looking down their noses in shock and pious disbelief. All she could see was Jesus Christ.  That's all that mattered. The rest of the world didn't exist in that moment.

Second - her hair!! Take a look at your own feet right now. Are you wearing shoes? If not, are you inside? When was the last time you looked at the bottoms of your own feet and investigated in between your toes? Would you bathe them with your own hair? I gotta say, I wouldn't. It just seems so gross....but now think about the feet that Jesus and the people of his time had - what they must have looked like.  They didn't have lace up tennis shoes and pedi-spas. They didn't have clean white cotton socks and paved roads.  No -- their feet were a true testament to where they'd been....outside, in sandals that left them open to the elements and to every single step they took in travel. And this woman - washed the well-traveled feet of Jesus Christ with her own hair.

She gave him what she had. Herself. Her humility. Her WAY less than true white heart. And while she came to Jesus clothed in a color contaminated by imperfect hues and scar laden splotches - she left him wearing white.

Just like each of us CAN. And like the woman in Luke 7 - we have been given the overwhelming joy that comes from being viewed as beautiful and worthy of a new, brighter color. She could not stop kissing his feet. I don't think I
should, either.