A Lesson In Humility

This weekend has been a meaningful one for me. Matt and I both had Friday off (which was so nice, you don't even understand), and it gave me time to meditate on the Easter season, which I'd neglected to some extent until then. Life has been chaotic, inwardly and outwardly, for me the past month. Maybe longer. And I let my circumstances dictate my worship, which is something I strive to avoid. But it happened.

This weekend, though, I could feel God's gentle pull on my heart. My daily commute brings me through the mountains. It is gorgeous in the summer-- lush, green, and vibrant-- and treacherous during the winter. Even though winter's wrath has slowly begun to recede, its grip has lingered on the slow changing trees and hills I pass on my way to work. As I settled into my morning drive, I subconsciously took in the dead things around me. The dead trees. The dead grass. The dead leaves in the road. And then I noticed it, just a flash at first, and then another, and then another: Purple. I'm not a botanist and couldn't tell you what it was, but protruding from the craggy mountain walls were purple flowers. Just patches of them, here and there, the only life on a mountain of death.

I've noticed this all weekend, not just on my drive to work, but everywhere. My neighbor's flowers, the only ones in bloom, purple. On the side of the highway. On our way to the zoo. Purple.

For those of you who don't know, purple is traditionally a color of royalty. To me it was a reminder of Christ's royalty, as I acknowledge Him as King and Lord of my life. And as I began to ponder His royalty, I started thinking about His coronation process. It was not a glorious one. It involved being whipped and ridiculed, and, eventually, being crucified.

How humble God made Himself.

Humble. That's a word we don't understand as a culture. It's a word movie stars and professional athletes throw around upon acknowledging success.  I watched the Oscars this year (as I do most years), and I can't tell you how many award winners stand on stage and say "I feel so humbled to be standing here."

You're standing on national television wearing a multi-million dollar dress and holding an Oscar. The word you're looking for is honored. You feel honored to be standing there.

You know what's humbling? To be God one day and man the next. To let yourself be tortured by a bunch of ungrateful, arrogant peons because irrationally, unquantifiably, you love them.

You know what's humbling? To be turned over to a death sentence by one of your best friends. To know your mother is watching you cry out as you're whipped by men you knit together as infants in the womb.

You know what's humbling? To beg your torturers for a drink of sour wine. To have your body pierced with a spear after you've yielded to death, just to prove you're gone.

You know what's humbling? To rise from the dead and then be turned into a borderline superficial symbol by those who want to use you to justify religion in their lives. Who want to use you to make themselves feel righteous by intermittently giving you a shout out, but never engaging in a relationship with you, not really.

You know what's humbling? To have your instrument of torture turned into jewelry or tattoos by people who neither know nor care what it really means.

That is humility-- willing, intentional humility, motivated by love and extended to the proud. Extended to me, the person who feels so entitled to her own happiness that she can't yield that to accept joy. (There is a profound difference between happiness and joy.)

Thank You, Jesus, for Your willingness to be humble. Thank You, thank You, thank You.