Muddy Feet

One afternoon during our trip to Amazonas, a knock was at the door. I opened it to a rainy, muddy afternoon and a very sweet elderly woman I had met the day before. She looked past me into what seemed to her a mansion: a two-story concrete building with a tile floor and painted interior walls. Behind the wooden sofa set with upholstered cushions was a kitchen eating area with a gas oven and a bookshelf full of pots and pans. In the back she could see a concrete stairwell and the door to a small bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower spicket on the wall that delivered cold river water. I interrupted her gaze with an invitation to come in out of the rain. She shyly looked down and refused, saying her muddy sandals would dirty the house. I insisted and she still refused, starting in on the purpose of her visit, right there on the threshold. After she left I thought about her in her house: a windowless two roomed adobe house with a corrugated metal roof, mud floors, one bed, one sink and a fire for cooking. I realized that little things like our encounter are the mistakes that make a difference. I let that beautiful woman leave thinking that her poverty and her muddy shoes were more important than the love and intimacy of sisterhood in Christ. As the norms of her reality are still in tact, I’m sure she never thought again about that conversation half in the rain. But I will think of it often. I have so much to learn about showing Jesus’ love amongst a poverty-stricken people.