When the late Roy L. Smith, pastor and for many years editor of a denominational magazine, was not yet eighteen, he received a hurried message at school that his father had been hurt at the mill where he worked. While Roy was running down Main Street in Nickerson, Kansas, a blunt man called out, "No use runnin', kid. He's gone."

Smith's father was a skilled mechanic and flour miller, and was highly respected in their little village, so every business in town closed down for his funeral. The day after the funeral, Roy and his brother went to the mill to gather up their father's belongings--his tools and the clothes in which he had died. The first thing Roy saw were his father's shoes, the soles turned up. There was a great hole in each one, stretching from one side of the shoe to the other. On the day Roy's father died, his father's bare feet were against the concrete floor of the mill. Less than two weeks before, his father had bought Roy a new pair of shoes. Roy would have given anything, he said later, if he could only have put good shoes on his father's feet for the last hour of his life.

If you choose Jesus as a role model, you're going to wrap a towel around your waist and wash the feet of others.