He Knew, and He Knelt
The word for Tuesday, August 18, 2026 is He Knew, and He Knelt.
The anchor verses are John 13:4 and 1 Corinthians 13:4.
There is a mountain bike trail in western Colorado called the Palisade Plunge. It runs down out of high country into desert canyon, and in summer the exposure on the lower half of it is brutal.
On the eleventh of June, 2022, a fifty two year old rider named Jeff Higgins died on that trail of heat exposure and dehydration.
Three other cyclists found him unconscious beside the trail. They called for help and they stayed with him. And there is a detail in that which is easy to read past. Those three had already run out of water themselves. They stayed anyway, and then they needed rescuing too.
Higgins did not survive.
His widow is named Amy. His family could have stepped away from that trail entirely.
Last November they built a shade structure on it.
They raised the money with the community, worked it out with the town of Palisade and the Bureau of Land Management and the local mountain bike association, and put up a shelter on the stretch where a rider is most likely to get in trouble.
Three and a half years too late to do Jeff Higgins any good.
Amy Higgins said why. Jeff would never want to discourage somebody from doing something they wanted to do, and still come home safe to their family.
On the third of August this year, a mountain biker had a mechanical failure about ten miles from the end of that trail. It was a hundred and five degrees. The nearest town broke its record high for the date that day by three degrees.
The rider made it to the shade structure and waited. Mesa County Search and Rescue drove an all terrain vehicle up, found them under it, gave them water, and hauled rider and broken bike back down.
Nine months after it went up, it held somebody.
Now open the thirteenth chapter of John, at a supper table the night before everything.
There is a sentence there with a hinge in the middle of it, and the hinge is the whole thing.
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.
Read the order.
HE knew. Everything the Father had was in HIS hands. HE knew where HE came from and where HE was going. There was no question anywhere in HIM about HIS own standing.
And so HE got up and took off HIS outer clothes and tied a towel around HIS waist like a household servant, and got down on the floor, and washed the feet of twelve men. Including the feet of the one who had already agreed to sell HIM.
The knowing is not in tension with the kneeling. The knowing is the reason for it.
A man who is unsure of his standing cannot afford the floor. He has to keep proving where he sits. GOD had nothing to prove and no rank to defend, and so GOD was free to do the lowest job in the room.
Then HE says it out loud. You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, because that is what I am. HE does not surrender the title. HE keeps it and kneels with it in HIS hands.
There was a man in the second century named Tatian who studied under Justin, and while Justin was alive he taught nothing strange. After Justin was killed, Tatian left the church and built his own system.
Irenaeus of Lyons, a second-century teacher who defended the faith against those who dressed up error to look like truth, wrote down what happened to him in one phrase. He was puffed up by the thought of being a teacher, as if he were superior to others.
And Paul, in the chapter about love that everybody has heard read at a wedding, uses that same expression. Charity is not puffed up.
Two ways to hold a position. Tatian had the smaller one and it inflated him. Christ had all of it and picked up a towel.
One more thing about that shade structure.
Amy Higgins gets nothing from it. Her husband is still dead. The shelter did not undo one minute of what happened to him in June of 2022, and no rider who sits under it will ever know his name unless somebody tells them.
She built it anyway, for people she will never meet, on the trail that took him.
You are probably carrying something today that gives you standing. A thing you know. A thing you survived. A thing you were right about, and people know you were right about it.
The question is not whether you get to keep it.
The question is what you do while holding it.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
- 🙏 To the one who was right and has been waiting a long time for somebody to say so.
- 🙏 To the one building something that will only ever help a stranger.
- 🙏 To the one who has been made to feel that serving means pretending you are small.
- 🙏 To the one who lost somebody and has been asked to be gracious about it.
Grace and Peace.