LEARNING FROM GOD

There are places and times that arrest our attention and command our thoughts toward God. For me, two of those are sunsets and the northwest. A rough plane ride to S.F., a book, and a visit to the Northwest got me thinking...

...it gets confusing; to be humiliated is a tragedy, but to have humility is a virtue.  I found a used book this summer that I tucked away, and in the past weeks pulled it out to read:  written by Andrew Murray the book is intelligibly titled Humility. Quite frankly I have been convicted. 

Muntadar al-Zaidi wanted, last month, to disgrace and humiliate President George Bush in his farewell visit to the Middle East.  So during a press conference in Baghdad the reporter for a local television station took both shoes off throwing them with remarkable accuracy at the head of the visiting president.  Sudarsan Raghavan with the Washington Post reports that this indeed was the “worst possible insult in Iraq and is meant to show extreme disrespect and contempt.” Did it work?  Reportedly not.

Politics aside, Jesus came. And in coming embraced everything that this world perceives as humiliating:  born poor, worked with His hands, never received a credentialed degree, rejected and tricked by friends, taunted about His ethnic background, wrongly accused, and finally strung up naked to die.  Did we humiliate Jesus?  Nope! We couldn’t disgrace the very Origin of grace.

I can only conclude, when the virtue of humility is fully lived, it is impossible to be humiliated.