[Martha] had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations…But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

—Luke 10:38-42

I love it when something in Scripture has multiple layers of meaning to it. It feels like being on an Easter egg hunt and finding brightly colored egg after brightly colored egg. And that’s exactly how it felt this morning in church when halfway through the testimony of a teenage girl who was about to be baptized, my wandering attention suddenly snapped back toward the stage as I heard the phrase, “and she found herself at the feet of Jesus.” 

It’s not that this was a phrase that held special significance for me before. As many times as I’d read stories like Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet, it just hadn’t caught my attention before. But yesterday it was like a spotlight flipped on in my mind and pointed directly at that phrase— “she found herself at the feet of Jesus,” —and it made me wonder what being at the feet of Jesus would look like for us today.

As I was studying for this post, I found four examples of what it means to “be at someone’s feet” in the Bible, and each one shows us a little snippet of what a relationship with Jesus should look like.

1. The first example is falling at someone’s feet and kissing them. It’s not too difficult to figure out that these gestures are gestures of submission and humility, but there’s more to it than that. The act of kissing someone’s feet in particular would have been seen as paying homage to royalty or divinity, and it was also a way to publicly recognize how low and humble the one bowing is in comparison to the person being honored.

   This one, more than the others, can be a little hard to swallow. Even today the idea of bowing to someone and kissing their feet can be a little off-putting, but it’s not the physical action (we can’t physically kiss Jesus’ feet right now anyway) that we need to adopt––it’s the attitude. I think most of us—myself included—are woefully under-practiced in recognizing the disparity between the heights of His holiness and the depths of our brokenness, but doing so puts us in the position to receive His grace and blessings.

1. The next example of being at someone’s feet in Scripture is washing someone’s feet. Most of us know about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and how they were confused and upset because this was a job normally done by a servant, but that’s not the whole picture. It wasn’t just any servant that was responsible for this job, but the lowest servant in the household, so again we see humility playing a huge role in this gesture.

   What’s interesting to me is that this is a gesture, not of general hospitality, but of welcome and service. Think of what it would look like to humble ourselves and extend a true welcome to Jesus in our lives. To open the doors and surrender control in that personal and intimate way.

1. Another famous example of someone in Scripture laying themselves at someone’s feet is when Ruth went to Boaz, uncovered his feet, and laid down by them. To us it seems like a pretty weird thing to do, but at the time, coving your feet meant that you were at rest. So by uncovering Boaz’s feet, Ruth was saying, “I’m not safe or able to rest. Will you protect me?”

   At the time, granting Ruth’s request would have meant marriage, which adds another layer of meaning to the request. Ruth wasn’t just saying, “Please protect me,” she was opening the door to a covenant relationship.

   Now think of that in the context of how we approach Jesus. We can consider washing someone’s feet to be like welcoming Jesus into your heart and mind for a nice visit. With Ruth’s example of uncovering Boaz’s feet, it would translate into surrendering your heart and mind to Him, so He can permanently move in and have authority in your life. It might sound scary for those of us who like to be in control, but there’s such security and rest in that step.

1. And then we come to Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. This was how students learned in Jesus’ day—they sat at the feet of a master and listened to what he had to say. I think this is a picture of maturity that comes after the other steps.

   First, we fall down at His feet and acknowledge that He is king. Next, we welcome Him into our lives, although I think most of us at this stage haven’t fully surrendered control. Then, after we’ve really given Him authority in our lives, we find ourselves at His feet just because it’s a joy to be there, learning from Him.

   That’s my prayer for all of us. I think we all fall back at times into wanting to treat Him like a guest instead of our Protector, Provider, and Teacher, but I hope we’ll all find ourselves experiencing the same joy Mary did at Jesus’ feet because, as we know from Scripture, that’s something that will never be taken from us.