Soon you will understand.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (John 13:6-7 NIV)

I have to say that I completely get where Peter is coming from here, I can relate to his confusion and I understand his hesitation. 

If you see it from his perspective this is the most Holy person on earth, someone without a single flaw or faliure, wanting to wash their very dirty feet. 

It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. 

I never understood why Jesus would want to be in our mess with us, why he would want to wash us of it. 

Our very first instinct is to hide it from him, to put forth to him only our best. We give him what we think he wants and leave the rest out. 

We are always so concerned with making sure he and everybody else sees the best of us, the best of our worship, the best of our serving and the best of our character. 

This concerns most us so much that as soon as he comes to something messy or imperfect within us we don't want him to have to deal with it, so we try to do it on our own.  

 We perceive that He is far higher then our mess as if it would somehow taint him as it has us. 

But here he says so clearly "you don't know why I am doing this, but soon you will understand" This concept is honestly so incredibly hard for me to grasp. I don't do uncertainty well, not knowing what might happen tends to make me anxious. 

Which is funny cos with God not only do we never know what might happen, we often have absolutely no idea.  

I lived so much of my life hiding every imperfection from God, that I now know he could see the whole time, I never let anyone see my flaws or showed emotion, it was actually really exhausting. It came to point where I couldn't do it anymore, and when Jesus stepped in, I acted just like Peter did here. As soon as he stepped I. though, I realized I had no idea how to clean it up, all of me had spilled out for all to see and I was left with no choice. but to let him do would I could not. 

It was messy and it was by far the hardest season I have ever walked through, but in the end he was right. 

I do understand now. 

I know exactly why I had to go through it then and why I may have to "let him wash my feet" again in the future. 

It's only once we are out of the mess stronger and more refined then we were before that we understand why He does what He does. 

The hardest part being trusting him when we have no idea what's going. 

Forgiving when we don't know why. 

Letting go of things we are so sure we need to hold onto. 

Showing weaknesses that we have kept hidden. 

Talking about the hard stuff. 

Coming to him with the worst of us knowing that while he is higher then our mess, he is also in our mess with us and he intends to bring us out of it. 

We don't always need to know why God is doing what he is doing. 

We just need to trust him in it anyway, because soon we will understand.