March 8, 2020 - INSCRIPTIONS FROM THE HEART

By Abby Zamora-Cheng

Growing up, I was taught to take daily showers in the morning after I woke up. This was very important to the women in my family because our hair became greasy quite quickly and so showering first thing helped us to go a full day without having a gross head of hair. For 26 years that was my daily routine...and then I got married. My husband Jason and his family operated differently in that their showers were taken at night, in order to wash off all the dirt of the day and go to bed fresh and clean. As silly as it sounds, this was a point of contention for us in our first few weeks of being a married couple. I couldn't bear to go to bed with wet hair and run the risk of it getting oily during the day, and he couldn't bear to sleep beside someone who was not freshly showered after a long day. After living with Jason for a while though, I started to understand his reasoning for evening showers and finally began taking them myself.

How hard is it to have lived your whole life doing something one way and then being told to do it differently all of a sudden? I responded in various ways to Jason's request that I shower at night before going to bed: I ignored, I reasoned, I even got mad. How do you think the disciples felt when Jesus suddenly told them about the "new commandment" he was giving them? If you look at the context of the passage, Jesus gave them the new command during the Last Supper (though the disciples didn't know it would be the last) right after he had finished washing their feet. I would guess that the disciples were just shocked at that point. Their master lowered himself to the posture of a servant and washed their feet, then spun one of the tenets of their lifestyle on its head ("love one another as yourself") and gave it a brand new meaning.

Jesus knows that the new commandment he gives to his disciples (and to all of us Christians who come after) is impossible through human effort alone. It goes against the human sinful nature to love others the way Jesus loves us: completely, unequivocally, and sacrificially. It was tough enough for me to break the lifelong habit of showering in the morning; what more so an action that goes against every fiber of my body telling me to look out for myself and myself only? We cannot hope to obey this new commandment on our own, which is why Jesus also commands us to "abide in his love" (John 15:4). John Piper describes abiding in Jesus as "hour-by-hour trusting him to meet all our needs and be our supreme treasure. And when we are confident that he will meet all our needs and be our treasure, we are freed and empowered to humble ourselves and meet the needs of others."

Jesus did not promise us an easy life when we decided to follow him as our Lord and Savior; in fact, he guaranteed the exact opposite. Jesus's commands go against everything in our nature and everything that the world (and the enemy) wants us to believe. It's easy to bend and break against such strong forces opposing us, but take heart: Jesus has overcome the world! Let's abide in Jesus so that we may be able to love others the way he loves us.