When a person walks through a day, his feet get dirty. It doesn’t matter. Shoes or no shoes. Walking through the day. It just happens. Dirt gets on our feet.

We don’t walk nearly as much as people used to. We have cars. If you don't have a car, there’s always public transportation. Uber. That kind of thing. Or you can always get a ride from a neighbor or co-worker. People are nice that way.

And then there's work. Think about people in the service industry. They have it hard. They’re on their feet all day.

At a restaurant, servers bring you your breakfast. Eggs and meat, your choice. Potatoes and toast. Butter and jam on the side. Or the gluten-free alternatives. Would you like a refill on that coffee? All the time on their feet.

You go into a store. You don’t think about it, but those people are standing up and walking around all day long. They go through the produce that comes off the trucks. They get rid of the overripe avocadoes, and line all the other ones just right, to be sure they look magically boxed up on display so you can get a good look at them and make the best choice for you. And when the avocadoes are finished, these workers move to another box just off the truck. The nicely arranged apples or pears are no accident, all of them the handiwork of someone working while on his feet.

The woman in the food truck not only has to stand, but also has restricted movement—just a few feet to move from window to grill and back for hours. All the while, standing. Standing on her feet.

I never really thought much about my feet until my right foot began to hurt. People noticed. “Why are you walking like that?” was a question I heard a lot. The doctor gave me the answer: I haveplantar fasciitisin my right foot. Standing isn’t the problem, putting weight on the foot is where the pain comes. I’ve become familiar with insets and exercises to ease the pain. When I’ve mentioned this to others, I’ve been surprised how many other people are in the same place or have recovered from this malady.

But even if we have no foot issues, it is a good thing to finally get home and take off our shoes and put on slippers or thick wool socks.

A friend of mine from college used to wash his feet every night. He said he couldn’t stand the smell otherwise. He was a big guy who could easily put each foot into one of the dorm bathroom sinks and would stand there carefully washing them with Ivory soap - every toe, top and bottom, ankles too. He faithfully did this every night.

The footcare industry offers us salves, softeners and soothers to help with our feet once we get home and take off our shoes.

In Jesus’s time, foot washing was a normal part of culture. How much more dirty would feet have gotten when Jesus walked through a day like we do.

Unless you work in podiatry or shoe sales, you probably don’t spend much time looking at your or anyone else’s feet. I’m thinking more about feet because of my own foot pain, but as it gets better I’ll soon stop thinking about them.

Yes, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, but for now I’m thinking about the feet of Jesus and pain.

How many tears does it take to wash a person’s feet?

Consider a tear, not that much water in one or two. The woman who used her own tears to wash Jesus' feet had to have had quite a cry. There was no towel but her hair, no soap but the tears that fell from her eyes. It had to have been a lot of tears.

Psalm 56:8 says “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”

When her sorrows collided with the feet of the man of sorrows, God noticed every one. It’s true, too, for the tears we shed.

When we stand and walk, our feet take our full weight on themselves. But those two feet, the ones the woman cleaned with her own tears, they took the weight not only of Jesus, but the immense weight of all our sins, as he walked to and then was nailed to the cross.

I know the tears the woman shed were nothing compared with the blood that Jesus shed, but there is a connection, our tears and his, his feet and ours.

We don’t usually pay much attention to feet, with the exception of the feet of newborns. We marvel at the details, so small and perfectly shaped and new. Those two newborn incarnated feet found rest in swaddling cloths bound up in the manger of Bethlehem, coming to walk this earth for us, he walked into the wilderness, walking on mount and valley and water, then wrapped in the herbs of grief, rising to walk anew in the garden and on the road and by the sea, now sitting at the throne of heaven.