Last week I was trying to plan a short vacation. As a Pastor, it is impossible to have a "staycation" because if your around then you are available. So I decided to go to a Reds Baseball game in Cincinnati. But I had time to kill so I thought I would make a weekend of it. I got on the net and began to look up weird and wonderful places to see on my trip. Like Rabbit Hash, Kentucky where the mayor is a Dog ( and it tried to bite me) or in Covington, KY, they have a house that is built like a UFO and a museum which has a 2-headed calf and a shruken head or even a place called Big Bone Lick State Park!
As I as looking these things up, I found a grave that had nothing but a foot in it. It was in Salisbury, NC where my wife just happened to be visiting her family. I told her about it and she went and found it. It is the foot of James A. Reid who had his foot severed in a freight train accident in the 1800's. He buried his foot in the Lutheran Cemetery and, ironically, the rest of him is buried across town in the Baptist Cemetery. But at the site of his foot is a headstone (or is it a footnote?) that marks the spot.
As I was laughing and thinking about this strange and weird thing, I got to thinking about how we all bury our foot. Jesus says, "If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." In writing about this verse, Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrote, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die." However, we are not quite willing to die completely to Christ so we try and compromise with Him by giving Him a foot. But He wants it all, not a foot. He wants to us to be completely sold out to Him. Not having one foot in the grave and one in world.
So let's all jump in with both feet! (Sorry I just couldn't resist that last one!)
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