Strength in Servanthood

Lent on the Run — Day 36

Apr 15, 2025

So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
— John 13:14-15

One of the most challenging transitions for me has been from being primarily an athlete—or runner—to coach. It is not because my gifts do not align with being a coach. Instead, I think it is because it is that new role that pulls the attention off my training and places it on others.

Yet, there is also a sense in which it feels very natural. The draw towards being a coach felt weird, because I had never envisioned myself as a coach, yet, it occupies the space and opportunity to take something I love, and help others find joy in it as well.

The gifts we all have are what call us into this nature of serving in God’s grace. This manner of serving is most notably shown as Jesus prepares to share one final meal with his disciples. Gathering the supplies, dropping to his knees and washing the feet of his disciples.

As a rabbi, he knew that it was the miles tread through his journey of teaching and preaching, the compassion and sacrifice, and the deeply giving nature that he wanted to impart on his disciples.

He handed them not only a lesson in his final hours, but an example by which to live. Jesus may not have been talking about literally washing one another’s feet, but he was saying that they should find ways to serve and help one another—both within and beyond the room they were in.

Our greatest gifts can turn into the ways we can serve and help others as they experience creation.

What are the gifts God has given you, and how can you use them to serve in God’s Kingdom?