Heroes With Clay Feet
Story by M, photography by Kym van der Plas
As we walk through our front gate, the kids on the street swarm around us. We have been visiting the place where we got married, a dusty Middle Eastern town where the children stay up late and play football on the vacant plot next to our house. We pause to chat with them; “Messi or Ronaldo?”, they ask, knowing full well that my husband is Argentine. They tease him and several loudly claim that Ronaldo is the better player. We laugh with them but beg to disagree. “For sure, it is Messi!”. The World Cup is underway, and these kids are rallying around their football heroes, excited to watch each match unfold.
I have been thinking about what it means to have a hero. At the beginning of the year, I decided to do a deep dive into a hero of the faith. Perhaps I could do this every year, I thought. Pick a hero and do my research; read their books, learn from their convictions and watch how they lived them out in weakness and in crisis.
We need heroes to inspire us and motivate us. Specifically, we need spiritual heroes. Not to put them on pedestals and leave them there - but to encourage us in the long road of faithfulness and to remind us to keep the gospel forefront in our minds and hearts. So, I began my deep dive on New Year’s Day. I chose Corrie Ten Boom to be my first hero and I am two books down with “Prison Letters” lined up to read next.
Reading about Corrie Ten Boom was more shaping than I expected. Far beyond her accounts of living in a concentration camp, I discovered a woman who had planted seeds in people’s lives for decades before she had been arrested by the Gestapo. In addition to pioneering girls’ clubs across Holland, she and her family regularly visited the sick, valued and cared for those who lived with differences and disability and embraced long term foster children in their home. This new hero even had an impact on how I approached a recent Sunday lunch conversation. Reconnecting with a relative who I see sporadically, I groaned outwardly when she told me a snippet of news about another family member. I was cynical and my response conveyed that. But then Corrie. As I read on, I noticed that she responded to things differently. Whilst she maintained her convictions, she did so with a gentleness that was slow to judge, graciously including others who did things differently. I realised that I needed to retrace my steps and say sorry. My hero was helping me to apologise.
Corrie has not been my first hero. For many years, Samuel Rutherford was. Still is. Ever since reading some of his almost 400-year-old letters to his parishioners, I have had an enduring admiration for this Scottish minister. I pictured harsh snowy winters preventing these hardy believers from attending church, yet their pastor sought to encourage his flock with letters delivered by horseback. Perhaps I romanticise a little. Yet not entirely for I hope that both Corrie Ten Boom and Samuel Rutherford will be bright gems among a string of beautiful lights; unassuming characters who began their lives in anonymity, but whose legacy moves our hearts, helps us to self-reflect and inspires us to keep praying in the ditches.
Yet what do we do when our heroes let us down? For some time now, I have been struck by a line in one of Brooke Ligertwood’s songs. A brilliant songwriter, she weaves Scripture and wisdom into each of her songs. “I belong to Jesus” is the song she penned for her daughter when she became a Christian. Ligertwood’s desire is that her daughter can look to Jesus to be her hiding place even “when people fail and leaders fall.” Because our heroes will fail.
Sadly, our dead heroes will have incriminating stories that are revealed after they have died whilst our living heroes have clay legs and in heavy rains they too will fall. It is not an excuse but somehow, we need to be appreciative of who they have been in their example to us and yet not be devastated when they come crashing down. I am not sure I know how to do this. When it strikes close to home, living this out is much harder.
Recently I have been deeply disappointed and angry to hear of abuse that has happened behind closed doors by those in Christian leadership. It is right to be angry when we hear of the abuse of power and authority and the deep pain caused to the vulnerable. I am not sure how to extend mercy and grace whilst utterly condemning the wrong. I want to run a mile from the fallout but perhaps the greater challenge is how to remain and respond in grace but never underbake our call for Christian leaders to live with integrity. It takes time to sift the good from what was plainly bad. And in all of this, God keeps showing me my own sin and flaws. This fresh clarity of late has given me pause; I admit that I am one who also stumbles and is not wise. I too have clay legs.
Like many at the start of this year, I was captured by the story of Austin Applebee. His story filled me with joy as I marveled at his amazing feat of survival. It was miraculous, it was astounding and it was terrifying. The nation was amazed by this young hero and rightly so. A teenager who had failed to pass a 350-metre swimming test then swims 4 kilometres in rough swells to raise the alarm that his family were in danger. For days, I read every article that was published about him, in awe and buoyed up by what an ordinary 13-year-old had put his mind to do. Yet it was his weakness that made Austin Applebee a hero. He had not spent months preparing for his heroic feat; he was a weak swimmer pursuing good for the sake of those he loved.
Tell me how my heroes are weak. I want to hear about their struggles. I want to know how they clung on to following Jesus despite their clay feet. I want to know how they overcame sin, grew in prayerful dependence and regained hope again. I want to see how Jesus became more and more beautiful to them. We need spiritual heroes because they provide us with a rich example of faithfulness, wisdom and grace lived out with wet, clay feet. We are to search for godly examples of Christlikeness and then imitate them just as they have proved to be imitators of Christ (1 Cor 11:1).
In addition to Brooke Ligertwood, Spotify informs me that I listen to a lot of Phil Wickham songs. “Hymn of Heaven” has a compelling line that conjures up a beautiful image of hope. One day we will sing praise and adoration to our God and “stand beside the heroes of the faith.” Can you imagine? Who do you want to stand next to? Could I imagine standing next to Corrie and her sister Betsy or Samuel Rutherford? Would they be recognisable? Or might I miss them in a crowd because they would be far more unassuming than I had supposed?
Perhaps this is the secret of their spiritual formation. These heroes have become extraordinary precisely because they were imitating Jesus in the unique set of circumstances in which they lived. Externally they seemed very ordinary. They had not planned on becoming heroes; they were simply looking to the hero whose integrity was never compromised, who always keeps his word and who will never let us down. Our human heroes will never hold to the standard that we set for them. What a relief and joy to know that we have the gift of a relationship with Jesus, God’s Son. He is the ultimate hero who will never fail us; our brother, friend, King and Saviour who will never disappoint us. Jesus is our supreme hero and the one who will never fail nor fall.
As the summer wears on, the dust kicks up under the feet of the local kids who play football into the night. Messi and Ronaldo are certainly worthy heroes. However, I will return my attention back to a Dutch watchmaker by the name of Corrie. She has shown me an even better hero.
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M—Regular Contributor
Until recently, M was an overseas cross-cultural worker, so she is now processing all the transitions whilst still in transition herself. She is grateful for her Latino husband, acts of kindness and grace and friends who have prayed for her in seasons of loss. She enjoys taking photos of beautiful doors and is dipping her toe into the world of birding. You can find more on Instagram @booksonfridays