God's Feet

I’ve gone away. Ireland rains, and this cottage bears it like the cows do, silently. I hear one cow complain, as I might if I were out there. Jonny knows how the weather gives me a one-track mind.

The days are green, the nights blacker than any of London’s, and quieter. It’s a break from gray concrete and fluorescents, from close air, the thin walls of a council estate, the shouting and the rap music. I am on a dairy farm, the birds chatty, low gutturals of cattle, the drip of weather on the eaves.

I’ve got things on my mind. I was able to set them aside this week, mostly. We do different things with our cares: bury them, bat them away like midges, ignore them. Unpack them onto the table next to our cups of coffee, talk through them, pack them up again, carry them out of the café. Write them into a journal, allude to them in a blog post. Lay them at the feet of God.

The Bible talks about that last one, and Christians often use the phrase. What does it mean to lay our cares at God’s feet? How do we leave them there?

I came across a verse recently that I hadn’t noticed before, and it has made an impression on me, stuck in my head for a few weeks.

 “A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.” Jeremiah 12:17?

It’s a weirdly worded verse, but kind of poetic, comforting, a bit haunting. I started thinking about its meaning. First, a glorious throne, exalted from the beginning – God is on His throne and always has been. That speaks of his sovereignty, his rule, his control. Then, the place of our sanctuary. We use that word for the main room in church, where we hold the service, but it’s also a rest, haven, escape. This dairy farm has been a sanctuary. To me, that verse says that God’s absolute control over everything, the fact that He is on His throne, is something I can rest in and trust in. His sovereignty, from and for all eternity, is the place of my sanctuary, and I can lay my cares at the foot of this throne.

Before we came to this farm, we spent two nights in Dublin, and it was there as I lay on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet, exhausted from vomiting and lack of sleep, that this verse came back to me.

A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.

If I hadn’t been awake and throwing up for hours, I might have found the thought funny, me finding “sanctuary” in front of a “throne”, but I was only lying there because I had little strength to move, and the thought passed without a smile. I normally don’t share details about sickness online, especially the horrors of gastric flu, but this is significant because as I stared into that bowl, miserable, it reminded me of fallen humanity, and that Jesus exchanged his glorious throne of heaven for a disgusting one covered in the filth of all of us. Besides our sin, he took on all that comes with being human: tiredness, hunger, pain, grief, sickness. We go through hardship knowing he has experienced it, too. We can approach his throne with our cares – and rightly, with our worship – because of that exchange.

I’d lain sick, weak, on a cold floor at the foot of a toilet, but I can see now that I’d also been in His care, under His sovereignty, at the foot of His throne.

Food took its time appealing to me again, but it has. I’m grateful for this time away, for the chance to come to a place that’s been in my heart for years. What a sanctuary it’s been: green fields for miles, three-week old calves, hillsides dotted with baby sheeps, spaghetti and blankets and books and cups of tea by the fireside. I’ve still got things on my mind, but I thank God for the space to think and pray, to come before his throne, to rest in his sovereignty.