Dirty Feet

Lent's nearly over.  Not driving myself, but riding with my commuter husband, I entered the all-night coffee/breakfast place where he drops me off in the morning. People whom one sees at 6:30am in an all-night dive are those who have been up all night.  This morning I saw a long-haired, unkempt man working a cross word puzzle.  His feet were swollen and dirty, shod only in deteriorating flip-flops.  He got up to go the restroom, and when he returned, he found his coffee cup gone, taken by the bus boy who probably thought he had left.  Angry words, directed at no one.  A waitress finally came over to him, to see why he was making so much noise.  She offered a new cup; he angrily refused.  I kept looking at his feet, feet that Jesus would have washed, but I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

I wonder if he knew how much he meant to me this morning.  I wonder if he was an angle, sent by God to remind me of my own dirty feet.