When I was following you,
I wasn’t being careful
and I stepped in
some dung.
I know,
he answered.
That’s why I’m here.
Now give me your feet.
Background
My friend Lore Ferguson Wilbert‘s book Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry shares a birthday with Worthy. Hers is a beautiful, needed, and timely treatment of an often untouched topic. (COVID-19 is a terrible time for book publishing. Please don’t let her important work be overlooked. Buy two copies and read it with a friend.)
In advance of her release, she asked some friends to compose original poems based on passages from the gospels that involve Jesus and touch. (To be honest, I was more intimidated by an email from Lore—a marvelous writer—asking, “Will you write me a poem?” than I was by publishing an entire book!) These poems were offered in a collection, along with recordings of the authors reading them, to those who preordered her volume.
I chose John 13.