Thanks Tom. As God is All in all, supreme and All action, we can be radical sons and daughters of God.

It was surely a radical act when the woman washed Jesus' feet with tears, dryed them with her hair, kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment (Luke 7:36f). The healing that followed was radical but also natural . . . as we learn in Christian Science. Healings that result from prayer and spiritual understanding may be considered miraculous by worldly standards, but they are natural and normal.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in ourselves, in our own problems -the problems that we have accepted as our own, that we miss the opportunity to help someone by not looking outward and upward...
ESPAÑOL
A veces nos envolvemos tanto en nosotros mismos, en nuestros propios problemas -los problemas que hemos aceptado como nuestros- que nos perdemos la oportunidad de ayudar a otros por no mirar hacia afuera y hacia arriba...

Thank you! The perfect ingredient for more effective healing work -- self-less humility.

While my mom stayed with me and my family for several weeks, I thought several times of washing her feet that were chapped from gardening in the desert. I've done it before with pleasure. But I just didn't get around to it in all the weeks of her visit, although we did many other things. She observed how full my days are and when she wanted to go home, she insisted that she'd ride the bus because it would take me 14 hours, round trip, to drive her there. But when I returned her to her home we enjoyed the trip together. I drove back the next day without fatigue and all the important things I had to do those two days were done without extraordinary effort. It was as if they were simply delivered to me and everyone involved in my business. My mom's thought that her wish to go home would be a burden to me washed away, like dust off her feet. I couldn't have done a better footwashing.

Tom, Thank you for a great lift

Thank you, my friend, for helping me understand my deepest needs just as Jesus did.

This is a humbling recognition of the courage and power of self-yielding and self-giving. The attitude expressed in foot washing, initially commended by Jesus, is recognized in the very beginning of the chapter on Christian Science Practice in Science and Health as a genuine mark of readiness for compassionate healing ministry.

What a great week it's been, Tom! Yesterday morning I was up at 4.30pm to pray before the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympics in London. What opportunities to triumph over perceived adversity. With hearts full of gratitude and humility stumbling blocks give way to stepping stones, and courage carries competitors forward to success and celebration.
Thank you Nate and the team; the Board of Lectureship and lecturers; and the all-loving Lift family.

Thank you! I surely needed this right now.

Thanks Nate, the world needs our prayers and we need to humbly go out there and lead the way.

Tom Thank you. Growing up in South Africa under the stringent laws of race discrimination,I thought of myself as somewhat "Inferior" and others as "Superior". It was not until I read the Book Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy,that I awoke to my true nature and selfhood as created by God, in his own image. The scales of timidity fell off my eyes I was free! "The kingdom of God is within you." Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love.[Pulpit&Press:page:3]

Thank you for a very thoughtful Lift.

Many thanks Tom for sharing that example with us. Yes. "Sacrificing self-consciousness in order to help lift others up." Not an easy step! "So may deeper consecration/ Show Thee forth in healing's sign,/ Till through joyful self-surrender/ We in Love's pure likeness shine." (Christian Science Hymnal #109).

Thank you Tom, it takes only one thought to give up "self" and to change around the scenery and atmosphere by drawing everybody together instead of self centeredness.
Also thanks to comment #12 Nomvula and her interpretation of Christian Science

Much appreciated Tom, thank you. What the world needs now.

A true reminder for us all to be humble.thank you tom.love and peace to all

I love this Lift!

Thank you, Tom. This is a beautiful lift. So helpful! The sweet little voice at the end of lift, announcing "This podcast is from the First Church of Christ, Scientist, from Boston, Massachusetts, is very precious!

What an inspiring and helpful Lift to end this week and the month. Thanks to #5 for sharing your selfless love for your mother and #12 for sharing how Chrisitan Science lifted you out of timidity and into dominion. "Our Father" is certainly the Father of each and everyone of us.

Es fácil caer en la tentación de tener lástima de uno mismo y ser atrapados en el ego funesto, dilucidar cual es el rédito espiritual de cada acción que nos presenten las circunstancias y que esa experiencia sea para afirmar nuestros pasos en el camino correcto, y sí armas tenemos para erradicar todo pensamiento egoista, lo dificil es lograr dicernir el punto de inflección entre el limite de cada acción, cuando parece que se está abusando de nosotros principalmente cuando nuestra tarea es servir a Dios y de alguna manera se nos está limitando la tarea a la que dedicamos nuestro esfuerzo mayor por ello la importancia de dejar todo en las manos divinas y su justa resolución porque no sabemos, Dios lo sabe cual es el fruto de cada acción y cual es el limite entre los actos si es que los hay, pues la máxima es hacer el bien, olvidandose de sí mismo.

"Oiste tú el secreto de Dios, Y está limitada a tí la sabiduría" Job
Quien puede dicernir Sus caminos.
"Para vigorizar la sana guerra espiritual, para reprender la vanagloria, para contrarrestar la vacuidad jactanciosa para coronar la labor paciente y regocijarnos en el espíritu y el poder de la Ciencia Cristiana debemos ser sinceros nosotros mismos. Hay una sola manera de hacer el bien y es haciendolo. Hay sölo una manera de ser buenos, y ésta es siendo buenos" ""MBE

Que bueno es recibir los mensajes diarios y guardarlos como un tesoro hasta el próximo lunes en que volveran paraa inspirarnos, muchas gracias Tom

Thank you Tom, I am off to work at our High School today and I am sure there are feet to be washed. Love to be reflected in love.

Thank you Tom, yes I will take your advice!

LOVED THIS DAILY LIFT! Thanks Tom. I will love shaing it with others, too.

Lovely, Tom! I'm remembering, there used to be a popular bumper sticker that said something about doing "Random Acts of Kindness". I haven't seen that bumper sticker in a while. But I do know that for a while, it became popular in the San Francisco Bay Area to pay for the person's bridge toll behind you, when crossing the Golden Gate or Bay Bridge. Yes, lots of opportunities every day to just help someone along their way! Smile at a frown, let someone go ahead in line, tell someone they look Great, thank someone for being in your life, leave some home-grown vegetables on someone's doorstep, and on and on Anonymous! Let it Shine - Pure Peace is Thine, what e're betide! Happy Labor Day Weekend here in the U. S. of A.!

Tom,
Thanks for the great lift! It remids me, love one another, as I have loved you! A simple command, that is not always easy to follow, yet; to be true healers, to be "Christ-like", it is a requirement!
Thanks for the reminder, Tom!

Enjoyed the lift and the little child at the end who so carefully pronounced everything. Made me smile.
Thanks!

There has never been a more radical thinker and doer than Mary Baker Eddy. I stand in awe of her accomplishments, as woman, in her day, and her 'super selflessness'. Tom, you have inspired me to believe that I, too, can be more selfless, less self conscious. Thank you for this inspiration!

Much gratitude for these Daily Lifts and all who make them possible.

Thank you Tom and Thank you #12 Nomvula. Beautiful! and thank you

Mary Baker Eddy.

That child at the end of the program is so so sweet. I love it!

Wow! Thanks.

Wow , I am gathering up the soap and towels RIGHT now. Thank you for the reminder of brotherly love. Jan

Thank you, Tom, for this Lift ~ it is truly uplifting to express selfless love! A few years ago I participated in a foot-washing opportunity at Bible Study Seminars, held annually at Asilomar, CA. The director had announced to the gathering that this would be one of the break-out session opportunities. I happily volunteered to be a foot-washer. A woman I was just getting to know hurried to me to have her feet washed. I was astonished that as I began washing her feet, thinking of the lovely qualities I was discovering expressed by her, tears began to flow!! The water provided was almost unnecessary! She had the same experience when we traded positions & she washed my feet. Spontaneous, unselfed love is at once humbling and uplifting. Now we happily, gratefully acknowledge one another as "foot-washing friends" sharing a deeply-felt appreciation of one another.
The director of the Seminar told us that he had offered this opportunity to a Middle-School group of youth as a way of helping them love one another ~ he told us it washed away tensions that had developed in the group. Without a torrent of words or admonitions, they had discovered how to love selflessly!
So thanks, again, Tom, for reminding us of this important lesson. As #5 reminded us, there is always time to express love! Just the Lift we need to start a Labor Day weekend!

Thank you so much, Tom. I enjoyed the story of your pony-tailed friend, and I hope he's free of any need for glasses now, because he so clearly SAW the group's need and he SAW what he could do to help and he boldly did it! What a great role model for us all.

To #12 Nomvula Cape Town South Africa: I'm rejoicing with you and for you! What a healing, and what leadership for the world.

I had a smaller but similar healing this week. I was feeling belittled by the opinions of a relative, but I had just enough oil in my lamp to realize that these thoughts were only a temptation to keep me stuck...to paralyze the good that I was about to do. With the help of this week's Bible Lesson, I was able to rise from the dust and keep going forward. I realized that opinions (even my own!) have no power at all! I couldn't be walled in or constrained in any way by someone else's small concept of me. Like Tom's friend, I was able to get into the dance of helping myself and others. Thanks also, #12 Nomvula, for sharing that quote about the "sovereign power" we all have "to think and act rightly."

This is so lovely and I am grateful to have heard it.Will listen again.

Tom, I found your lift immensely rewarding!! Thank you for stating so beautifully that we must surely think of others first! Love to all.....

That was wonderful, thanks...

That's a very important message. Thanks, Tom!

This is a very special Lift. Thank you for bringing out that self-consciousness had to be overcome. I know that tendency to withhold true giving, not participating due to self-consciousness and have seen the great rewards and grand freedom that come from loving and serving selflessly. I appreciate thinking about this more deeply and for your command to look for "foot washing" opportunities.

Dear Tom
Thank you for this Foot washing reminder about Jesus and his humility -- loving, serving, putting himself as a servant. Thanks #32 for sharing your own story.
I am grateful for ALL the stories shared all the time by the Lift Family -- I think of us all as being a world-wide congregation, people of many backgrounds, and many faiths, all on a God-journey.
It is all-inclusive.
Have been checking. the radical acts on time4thinkers.com
Yes! Inspiring -- motivating! So honest.

Great Lift- Thank you! Perfect: Have a self-less Labor Day and weekend, "washing others feet"!

Talk about "Foot Washing." when I got sick, I needed 24/7 help, and I got that help from a Nurse Aide. She was supposed to work 6 hours per day but not only stayed with me for 6 hours, but the full day and the full night, helping the other Aides tend to me. You hear about things like this in story books, but never in day to day life. I thank God for this help, day and night. I thank God also for leading me to the study of C/S which enables me to keep focus on him instead of the illness.

It's amazing how self-involved we can be when troubles come our way, but I find this thought very free-ing...if I can allow God to take care of me, as He will, then I can use his gifts to me to take care of others, and in that space, no fear is evident, for I am only thinking of how I can serve others. Thank you! (:

Thank you, Tom, so simple, so profound. And I am moved by my first visit to the Radical Acts site and the generous sharing there. Challenging the Pharisees within me is a great awakening. Stop the hypocrisy and just love, share good.

Thank you.

Gosh this is Good! Thank you. Love it.

Thank you, All, and especially, thanks, #33, and ditto!

Wonderful! Thank you for reminding me I have "foot washing" opportunities every day, with everyone in my experience and in my thoughts.....humility and meekness are graces cultivated in our human lives and they prove Love's ever presence. I hadn't thought about Jesus using the only item he was clothed with to dry the disciples feet. What a deep thought.....was it his overwhelming spiritual grace that enveloped them in divine Love? Humbling their thought, preparing them for their spiritual journey without his physical presence as they followed his command to go forth and preach the gospel and heal. I loved this idea.

This is a tender and encouraging message to subdue self and experience opporunities for humility and love. Thank you.

Thanks Tom. An idea that is helping me is "Be the light that enlightens the darkness".

Thank you ever so much, Tom. Humbly, Jesus spoke, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." Mary Baker Eddy wrote in part: "... admit that all Christians are properly called Scientists who follow the commands of our Lord and His Christ, Truth; ...." (Miscellaneous Writings, p.193). Being able to follow these admonitions, all mankind will wash the world's feet with Truth and Love. No higher work may we do. No greater gratitude may we offer.

Loved your lift Tom. Great reminder to be alert for opportunities to express more unselfed love each day.

Could selfishness and self consciousness have something to do with each other? Thanks for the wakeup call! Love the idea of having a selfless day.

Beautiful...thanks Tom...I so believe that if we all truely washed each others feet we would never look at that person the same ever again...or would they look at us the same...I have many examples of this and should get busy and share...
Much love
Kirsten

Simply...Thank you!

Thank you.

Excellent!Forgetting "self" paves the way to good work.Thank you.

How true it is that when we put self out of the way, opportunities open up to help others, and in the process our needs are always met. Thank you, and another thank you to the girl with the beautifully expressed sign-off message.

Yes! We should all be Self-conscious > conscious and wide awake to our true individuality. This will help me put it into action today. Thanks to you, Tom, to all that produce these inspirations and to each Lifter.

Thanks for the link to all those wonder-full accounts of true radical choices.

21 comments could be translated using a web translator app. Once I read the translation in English, there was a further treat, and convenience: an audio reading of the English translation. Splendid. Thank you commentors who shared even other languages could be read and inspiration shared by translating them. Talk about the foot washing here at this website, Daily Lifts. I am deeply grateful. Also deeply uplifted daily. With a joy for today, thank you Tom.

So much love shared by Tim's Lift and then this great banquet of Love..."Love's divine adventure to be All-in all".

Thanks bunches!

Thanks to one and all.

What a great unselfish way to help others at a dance! I will be looking out for ways to help too. I also love the precious young child's voice at the end. It brings sweet memories and the holy truth of how much God's perfect love was shown in giving all mankind His Son, Christ Jesus.

Thank you so much Tom for the instructive and nice message.

Dear Tom,

I never quite thought about Jesus being thinly clad just to wash the feet of his disciples. What a truly humble picture you have painted. Thank you so much.

GREAT STORY, TOM! --THANKS.

Thanks, Tom! Message much appreciated. Blessings all around. The infinite embrace.

Dear Tom, I thank you for this Lift. I have recently reunited with a friend of 26 years ago in high school and college. He recently shared with me how hurt he was that I had shunned him our sophomore year of college. I had no memory of this occurring. He told me I shunned him because he was using drugs. I cannot tell you how sad I was to have learned that I did this to my friend and when he needed me the most, what kind of a crummy Christian Scientist was I? I struggled greatly with this knowledge but then my friend said, "you know, you are a different person now. You are loving now. I never would have known you were the same person." I care greatly about my friend who it turns out struggled the past 25 years with drug abuse. What would have happened had I not shunned him but rather had washed his feet? I am washing his feet now. I am si very grateful that God has brought this around to me again so that it could be healed. Christian Science is teaching me how to love.

Many, many years ago, when expressing self-consciousness that could render me helpless in piano recitals, my piano teacher, a CS, told me that self-consciopusness was just that... too much consciousness of self. That idea supported me during twenty years as a society organist & as a First Reader. The reminder in this Daily Lift is appreciated. Thank you.

awesome, thanks Tom!

12, NOMVULA CAPE TOWN SOUTH AFRICA

I can identify with what you are saying, I grew up in Argentina where my mom was a chef for the American Embassy. I used to think that ALL the Americans were highly educated and well behaved as the diplomats we knew, I saw myself as "inferior".
When I was a teenager my mom went to a Christian Science lecture and we were liberated of all sort of ties, later on I began to study Science and Health and that's how I discovered the real meaning of being God's image and likeness. I began to see the great benefit of seeing EVERYONE superior in God's eyes, we were ALL SUPERIOR!!!

Very nice message... thank you very much!

Thank you, Tom, for keeping me reminded to think of others, and serve them, and especially work with humility to see purity in others, and to remove the dust & dirt of today, that tries to cling to them, but results from belief in the Gen.2 dust made man. Actually, I can't totally leave self out. First I must examine self to be sure I'm seeing man as Jesus saw everyone. I must keep watch on my thought to be sure I don't slip into mortal man thinking, so I can see more clearly the spiritual man in everyone I meet. Many people won't be a big challenge, but this Lift is about Radical foot washing, so I must concentrate on ones who seem to need it most, and who also seem least likely to be washed with spiritual love from another human. The term "radical" can make this interesting. Not only for the toughest prospects from human standpoint, but also finding a radical way to wash the seeming good folk, ones who think they are good enough so "don't mess with them, if you please, folk". These are the "Peters", who don't want feet washed by another Christian, certainly not from a Christian Scientist. This isn't a project to convert anyone, but to serve them, as Christ Jesus served each, including reluctant Peter, and Judas whom he knew was about to betray him. But, Tom, I confess, I'm not ready for the naked part. I'd be self-conscious. Will have to settle for stripping all material thoughts, to better serve. Special thanks to #5 Deborah, #12 Nomvula, #32 Linda, & #67 Anonymous.

I am a day late but wanted to say thank you for this lift. Also, thank you to no.12 Numvula, just what I needed to hear.

Thank you Tom. I am a little late on the whole week , however I always listen to them all.!!! :)

Thank you chet for that clear and concise message, a beautiful lift not just for today.

Thanks, Tom, for "More radical foot washing...in minutes the whole room was dancing and having a good time...everyone can have a good time..." I love the idea of looking for opportunities to rejoice and be glad and encourage others to do the same - all for the glory of God.

I reeeeally needed this one... thank u sooooo much !!

My husband and I smiled at this daily lift, as we appreciated it and could identify with it. So, thank you, Tom.

On Friday I received this 'Thought for the Day' from a Hindu friend. 'Nothing in the nature lives for itself. Rivers don’t drink their own water. Trees don’t eat their own fruit. Sun doesn’t give heat for itself. Flowers don’t spread fragrance for themselves Living for Others is the Rule of Nature.'
What a great message from you both.
Thanks Tom

Thank you. This was very helpful today.

Great lift and comments. Good news is, there are foot washers available... no waiting!! Thanks!!

thanks for this humbling and practical message. Thanks to everyone for sharing; these comments bring tears to my eyes and a lift to my heart.