{"id":6353,"date":"2018-09-18T18:17:01","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T23:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brethren.org\/?p=6353"},"modified":"2018-09-18T18:17:01","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T23:17:01","slug":"we-wash-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/2018\/09\/18\/we-wash-feet\/","title":{"rendered":"We wash feet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Youth Peace Travel Team members at National Youth Conference 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People who know me, really know me<\/em>, know that when I\u2019m truly touched by something, I go into what you could call a state of shock. I try to hide myself away and process. On Wednesday night of National Youth Conference, I did something I\u2019ve never done before; I willingly walked into a room with a group of people after experiencing something important.<\/p>\n

I cried. Now I don\u2019t cry often. If I do, you know something is really important to me. I cried, trying to hide my tears as I\u2019ve taught myself to do. But I sat in a room full of people and listened to others. When I walked in, Jarrod McKenna was introducing himself to everyone and asking everyone\u2019s names. And I must have had a stance of trying to still be hidden because he came over and, in a whisper, asked my name. When I have been impacted, in the way I was tonight, I get very moved by people acknowledging me, with a slight touch or a word. It just makes the tears flow so much easier. So when Jarrod McKenna asked my name and shook my hand that\u2019s when the tears started coming.<\/p>\n

National Youth Conference is such a special place. I believe it is where the heart of the Church of the Brethren lives. It\u2019s where people can truly begin to grasp what our mission is and who they are going to be within that mission. We are challenged together. We laugh together. We play together, and then we say goodbye. This is rare.<\/p>\n

I have participated in Jarrod McKenna\u2019s alter calls twice now, and each time, most of the worship participants come forward, eager to say they will be a rebel for Christ too. And every time, he warns against just following the crowd. He respects those who do not come forward and so do I; it shows that they are truly thinking about the choice they are making. They choose the harder stance in the moment, but perhaps not in the long run. Big active calls like that seem easy in the moment. They are exciting and rousing. They make you part of a team, a crowd, a revolution – if only for that moment. To walk from your seat to the crowd takes barely any effort at all, but I believe all the people who came to stand in the crowd believed in what they stood for.<\/p>\n

Rebellion is hard work. It isn\u2019t very glorious in most cases. We were literally called to be humble, to not seek the limelight – but to use a basin and towel. We were challenged to live as Jesus teaches through scripture. The Brethren way of understanding the Bible is often not how the rest of America understands the Bible, which can create an \u201cus against them\u201d mentality, which is counter to Jesus\u2019 teachings. What if we truly acted as if we were on everyone\u2019s team? We were challenged to live by the towel and the basin. When we are confronted by another and find ourselves feeling combative and vilifying each other, we must remember that \u201cwe wash feet.\u201d That\u2019s who we are.<\/p>\n

After the service, like I said, I walked into a room with other people. Those were the people who were called to come talk more about their feeling of call. \u201cCall\u201d is a hard word to describe if you haven\u2019t felt it, but I think most of us have in some way or another. What if we listened more intently for our call? In that room were 15 people who felt a call to have a discussion about what they were feeling. It wasn\u2019t a big call but they followed it. What if we took even a small step towards our call? Many felt like their call was too big. It seemed like their whole world was changing\u2026and hopefully it will. Perhaps this change happens by traveling somewhere else, by finding developing countries in which to wash feet. But maybe it is just as world changing to wash the feet of your classmate, or to love the man down the road who lives alone. It felt like some in the room wanted to be Superman. I get that. But what if we changed our personal world before trying to change the whole world? People in this discussion also expressed a longing for community. I get that. I\u2019ve talked a lot about loneliness this summer. It\u2019s not something I thought would relate to the subject of peace, yet I have found that it does. Finding the people in our communities who will help up on our journeys is tough work. I haven\u2019t found a whole lot of them to be honest with you. Sometimes being a peacemaker can be lonely. But guess what?! We were just at a conference with at least 1,000 people who felt the same way. What if we gave other people the connections we long for?<\/p>\n

We need YOU to hear what has happened to not let it fade! Let the stories from NYC be a spark which ignites the Christ light in you. Let Christ\u2019s light propel you forward! Let Jesus\u2019s Gospel train barrel down the tracks, until that train is packed full of the people who want to join God\u2019s mission. Packed full of the feet that you and others have washed. Packed full of people who have become peacemakers. Packed with those who have learned about what it means to truly follow Jesus. Everyone can board our train! Let go of your fear of being seen, of seeming odd, of being misunderstood, of being the outcast, of being weird.\u00a0You will be weird.\u00a0Good.\u00a0Jesus was weird.<\/p>\n

All you have to do is remember that \u201cwe wash feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peace and Prayers,<\/p>\n

Laura Hay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People who know me, really know me, know that when I\u2019m truly touched by something, I go into what you could call a state of shock. I try to hide myself away and process. On Wednesday night of National Youth Conference, I did something I\u2019ve never done before; I willingly walked into a room with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[169,465,638,681,793,835,1199,1246,1247],"class_list":["post-6353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-youth-peace-travel-team","tag-call","tag-footwashing","tag-jarrod-mckenna","tag-laura-hay","tag-national-youth-conference","tag-nyc","tag-wash-feet","tag-youth-peace-advocate","tag-youth-peace-travel-team"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}