Devoting Oneself to Humility: Motives

Morning

(Pray)

Praise the LORD, O my soul;

   all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the LORD, O my soul,

  and forget not all his benefits—

 who forgives all your sins

  and heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit

  and crowns you with love and compassion,

who satisfies your desires with good things

  so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1-5)


(Praise the Lord.  Thank him for one thing or remember one wonderful thing about him.  Say, "Lord, thank you for . . ."  or "Lord, you are . . . ."  Use the Psalm as your starting place.)


Midday

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  (Matthew 18:1-4)

(Take time to watch a child.  Remember your own childhood.  Think of God as your "daddy.")

Evening

There are three great motives that urge us to humility. It becomes me as a creature, as a sinner, and as a saint. The first we see in the heavenly hosts, in un-fallen man, in Jesus as Son of Man. The second appeals to us in our fallen state, and points out the only way through which we can return to our right place as creatures. In the third we have the mystery of grace, which teaches us that, as we lose ourselves in the overwhelming greatness of redeeming love, humility becomes to us the consummation of everlasting blessedness and adoration.  (Andrew Murray, Humility, Introduction)

(Which motive for humility are you most familiar with?  Which motive draws you most?  Ask God to use these motives to deepen your humility.)

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Praise comes from humility.  Praise, like humility, comes from the three things mentioned in Murray's introduction.  I praise because I am a creature and God is my Maker.  I praise because I am a sinner and God is my Savior.  He "redeems my life from the pit."  I praise because I am a saint.  Praise is my destiny and life, so that my "youth is renewed like the eagles."  Praise comes from humility.

When I think about God as my "daddy," I have an image of my hand in his.  He doesn't let go, nor does he get tired of holding my hand.  He doesn't get tired of me.  One of the parts of being a child is the expectation that a parent will be there to watch over me, help me, and delight in me.  To humble myself like a child is to expect God's love and care and never doubt it.  If I feel lost, I will wait for him (and maybe cry, too).  If I feel him near, I will engage in the never-ceasing questions and the requests of "Let me show you this, daddy."


I have been drawn into humility from my sinner side recently.  Struggling with anger and depression opens up all sorts of bad habits and thoughts.  Yesterday, I just became aware of how weak I am.  My daughter sprained he ankle and it now having to strengthen it.  The damage is healed, but now it is somewhat weak.  I feel I am there with a number of my struggles.  God has healed a number of hurts and broken places, but now I remain weak and easily hurt myself over and over.


Strengthening requires humility.  As a recovering sinner, I have to rely on God's grace and strength to come into me so I can recover.  I cannot recover on my own.  Yet, he gives me exercises I can do to accept that strength that he sends.  I cannot recover without exercising.  Exercising (and resting) build strength.  Troubles and challenges show me how much I have come to rely on God's strengthening grace.  I must continue to do my "therapy," however before I can meet such troubles well.  As a recovering sinner, I am always exercising and resting in God's grace.  "Continue to  out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you."  (Philippians 2:12-13)


Lord, I cannot completely forget all your benefits because I need them so much.  Your healing grace, your forgiving grace, your redeeming grace, your satisfying grace is what I long for and need.  The less I forget, the more I stand in praise, holding your hand, allowing you to lead me in eternal living at your side.  I pray for my own complete recovery.  Amen.

Sacred Potential in the Mundane Task

Devotional Classics, Kathleen Norris, Excerpts from The Quotidian Mysteries

I do detect in the quotidian, meaning daily or ordinary, rhythms of writing a stage that might be described as parturient, or in labor, about to produce or come forth with an idea or discovery.  And it always seems that just when daily life seems most unbarable, stretching before me like a prison sentence, when I seem most dead on the inside, reduced to mindlessness, bitter tears or both, that what is inmost breaks forth, and I realize that what had seemed "dead time" was actually a period of gestation.

 [The Christian perspective] views the human body as our God-given means to salvation, for beyond the cross God has effected resurrection. . . .  We must look for blessings to come from unlikely, everyday places - out of Galilee, as it were - and not in spectacular events, such as the coming of a comet.

It is precisely these thankless, boring, repetitive tasks that are hardest for the workaholic or utilitarian mind to appreciate, and God knows that being rendered completely mindless as we toil is what allows us to approach the temple of holy leisure. . . .  I recall that as a college student I sometimes worked as a teacher's aide in a kindergarten and was interested to note that one of the most popular play areas for both boys and girls was a sink in a corner of the room. . . .  The children delighted in filling, emptying, and refilling plastic bowls, cups, and glasses, watching bubbles form as they pressed objects deeper into the sink or tried to get others to stay afloat.  It is difficult for adults to be so at play with daily tasks in the world.

The contemplative is me recognizes the sacred potential in the mundane task, even as the terminally busy go-getter resents the necessity of repetition.  But, as Soren Kierkegaard reminds us, "Repetition is reality, and it is the seriousness of life. . . repetition is the daily bread which satisfies with benediction."  Repetition is both as ordinary and necessary as bread, and the very stuff of ecstasy.  (pp. 363-365)

 "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46)

 My daughter taught me how to love animals.  I have never been a real fan, seeing them as mostly inconvenient.  It is in those inconveniences that animals show one of their most endearing qualities: comic relief.  It is difficult when the goats eat the box of nails I'm trying to work with down at the barn.  It is hard when the cats follow me back and forth from the garage, hoping for something to eat.  It is annoying when one of the dogs refuses to stop barking at other dogs miles and miles away.  However, in these things there is also humor as I try to deal with them.

The animals delight in following us around.  They are full of curiosity or their own needs.  Caring for them and dealing with them slows me down.  At times I resent the interference.  I am in a hurry to get to something "important."  The animals have different priorities.  Their dependence is endearing.  Their simple lives even compelling.

When a person shares their "testimony" in church, I expect to hear about some earth-shattering event that brought them to an awareness of God and their need for a Savior.  In practice, however, salvation happens in the cracks of life, in between the main events.  Salvation is more about everyday living that about remarkable occurrences, just like marriage is more about everyday living than a wedding or an anniversary.  It is not that special occasions and powerful moments are unimportant.  They just are built on the base of everyday things.  Marriage is built on everyday kisses and hugs, work around the house, changing diapers, feeding animals, etc.  Salvation also occurs in these everyday matters when they are received with faith and gratitude.  "The very stuff of ecstasy" as Norris writes.

I suppose that the humility necessary to come to Jesus is found in this appreciation of the everyday.  "The faith of a child" transcends workaholic or utilitarian.concerns.  For adults trying to "get somewhere,"  children can be exasperating.  For children trying to play, adults can be exasperating.  It is not that God never wants me to focus on something in work, but as often as not, he plans for rather mindless work to open up time for me to look beyond my occupation and play or rest in him.  Workaholics and utilitarians are narrow and see very little of life or of God.  "They will never enter my rest," God might say when I am caught in these attitudes.  (Hebrews 3:11)

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  What a common place!  A place with no history and no future!  The same question comes about repetitious, mundane activity.  Can any good come from it?  Jesus encourages me to "look at the birds in the air" or teaches me that "the kingdom of God is like a woman kneading dough."  Embedded in the everyday is the voice and wisdom of God, if I will just play with him.

Lord, give me today my daily bread.  I don't just want something to eat, but the everyday life that builds and supports my life with you.  Let my heart be attuned to your wonder and wisdom in all you have made and all I get to do.  Amen.


I feel a thrill about going to work and knowing God will meet me in the mundane.  I easily forget that so much of his joy and peace come through these "mindless" activities.  In them I can be mindful of him and his ways.

God Works in Stillness

Devotional Classics, Dag Hammarskjold, Excerpts from Markings

I am the vessel.  The draught is God's.  And God is the thirsty one.

Maturity: among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his playmates.

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler - quieter, warmer.

Before Thee, Father,

In righteousness and humility,

With Thee, Brother,

In faith and courage,

In Thee, Spirit,

In stillness.

Thanks to your "success," you now have something to lose.  Because of this - as if suddenly aware of the risks - you ask whether you, or anyone, can "succeed."  If you go on in this way, thoughtlessly mirroring yourself in an obituary, you will soon be writing your epitaph - in two senses.

Do what you can - and the task will rest lightly in your hand, so lightly that you will be able to look forward to the more difficult tests which may be awaiting you.

When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles quiver under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly, nothing will go quite as you wish - it is then that you must not hesitate.

The third hour.  And the ninth hour. - They are here!  They are now!  "Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world.  We must not sleep during that time."  (Pascal)

Understand - through the stillness,

Act - out of the stillness,

Conquer - in the stillness,

"In order for the eye to perceive color, it must divest itself of all colors."

Your own efforts "did not bring it to pass," only God - but rejoice if God found a use for your efforts in His work.

Be grateful as your deeds become less and less associated with your name, as your feet ever more highly tread the earth.  (pp. 357-360)

 One thing about small animals, picking them up too much tends to make them less friendly.   We have Pomeranians.  Some of the people they avoid most are the ones that try to pick them up all the time.  They want to come.  They may even crawl into your lap.  They are friendly.  They just don't like to be picked up a lot.

Even dogs seem to understand a "light touch."  Try to get them to like you by picking them up doesn't work. Somehow they need a little space and a little time to come.  Stillness helps.  It seems to help with a lot of things other than getting along with Pomeranians.

The stillness that Dag writes about begins with realizing that "God is the thirsty one."  He is far more active than I am.  He has made me to be filled and emptied.  Filled with what does not belong to me and what I cannot get on my own.  Filled with blessing.  Emptied of self-worry and self-satisfaction.  Empty with eager expectancy.  God thirsts to see me filled with blessing.  God thirsts to see me empty with eagerness before him.  Both bring stillness.

Stillness brings endurance.  As the tasks come, I can hold them lightly because the success is not mine to have nor mine to give.  I can endure because I know the one thirsty for my blessing and thirsty for my eager confidence.  He longs to show himself as true to me and to everyone.  I can rest in my work, even when it becomes difficult, because of the one who succeeds for me and through me.  I need not hesitate.  I can celebrate even before the task is done.

Stillness is not sleep.  It is not mere inactivity or passivity.  It is actively letting go of one thing to take hold of another.  The picture Dag has is good.  The eye must let go of colors to see another.  Stillness is darkness before the light.  It is not the stillness that brings understanding, action, or conquest.  It is the God who lives in and beyond the stillness.  "Moses approached the thick darkness where God was."  (Exodus 20:21)  God is light, but resides beyond darkness.  I learn that most often I must stop doing something before I can start doing something else.

In my work, stillness will bring confidence and blessing.  It will bring perseverance and God's success.  It will bring restful activity.  It will bring it, not because of my stillness, but because of God's loving activity.  "God is the thirsty one."

Lord, may my stillness come from faith and not fear or laziness.  I hope you will find use for my work.  Please teach me how to "tread lightly upon the earth" because of my confidence in you, True One.  Amen.

God can come into my work day through stillness.  If I could but stand and see what he will do for me, I might be able to begin to act out of that knowledge.  Pauses between actions may help me.

 

 

 

 

 

Looking, Seeing, and Believing in God Incarnate

Devotional Classics, Annie Dillard, Excerpts from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

There is another way of seeing that involves a letting go.  When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied.  The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera.  When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter.  When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut.  When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.

The world’s spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind’s muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash cannot be dammed, and trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness.  Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act purely without utterance.

The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. . . .  But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. . . .  I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.  It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind.  Light, be is particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go.  The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.  Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the nearest puff.

It was less like seeing that like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.  The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. . . .  I was still ringing.  I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck. (pp. 345-3457)

Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.  (Mark 8:26)

One of the wonders of being out in the beauty of nature is that I learn quickly that I cannot truly enjoy it until I can really “see” it.  I hear phrases like “taking it all in” or “being really present.”  What these point to is that looking at something or someone is not necessarily seeing them.  I must first practice seeing before I can really find beauty or meaning or depth in what I look at.

Dillard’s illustration of walking with a camera and without is good.  When I move from “shot to shot,” I have certain things I am looking for.  I see beauty through a lens where beauty is predefined and predetermined.  My experience is limited by my “eye” for a good shot and my expectations of what those shots look like.  I look, but do not see.

Without the camera, I might find that I myself become the camera.  I take in the scenes and watch them carefully.  They imprint themselves on my inner eye leaving not so much a picture, but a deep impression.  The media changes from a picture to a memory.

Looking sets my eyes in a direct line with the object.  Seeing often grasps what is at the edges of my sight.  Whatever is directly before me is influenced by what is beside me in my peripheral vision.  What I see comes from what “broadsides” me more than what is in the center of my vision.  The angles of seeing are skewed and scattered from what I look at.

Seeing involves letting go of looking.  When I look, I am transfixed by the many thoughts and feelings that parade in my mind.  I seek to gaze and wonder at these inner sights.  Seeing often means looking beyond the parade.  It still goes by and I have to let it go.  Seeing is not trying to stop the march of thoughts and feelings, but to stand aside from them for a time.  Instead of looking at what I may think about certain things or people, I allow them to stand on their own and give me an impression.  I let them give me an impression instead of trying to gather one myself.

The experience of seeing is remarkably similar among people.  There is universality to it.  It is not unheard of, but often it is infrequent.  Such experiences leave a mark, like the continued ringing of a bell.  It is struck, but it continues ringing.  It is more gift than achievement.  It is the pearl of great price that cannot be sought, but it can be found.  The proper response to seeing is “Thank you” more than “Eureka!”  In this way, I am seeing clearly.

Like the sun or rain which God gives to the evil and good, the righteous and unrighteous, seeing is a gift.  What makes the gift into a grace is the position of my heart before God.  If I humbly adore God, seeing is believing.  If seeing leads me to God incarnate, seeing is believing.  If I find myself waiting for God, seeing is believing.  Moving from looking to seeing is one step.  Moving from seeing to believing is another.

Lord, I find myself too impatient to see.  I find myself too worried or proud to believe.  Open my eyes.  Open my heart.  Give me sight.  Heal me.  Help me to see clearly.  Amen.

Solitude and silence help me to see.  They increase my awareness.   Prayer and meditation on the Bible help my seeing become believing.  They increase my love.

The Incarnation Gives a New Picture of God

Devotional Classics, Athanasius, Excerpts from On the Incarnation

For of what use is existence to the creature if cannot know its Maker? . . .  And why should God have made them at all, if He has not intended them to know Him?

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains.  The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material.  Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God.  He, the image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself.

You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself.  (pp.339-342)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:15-16)

God-made-flesh in Christ is unique.  No other human teacher claims this for himself other than Jesus.  Whether he says, “I and the Father are one,” or forgives sins not committed against himself, or says of God’s law, “You have heard it was said, . . .  but I tell you,” Jesus claims the same prerogative as God.  How can this be?  Is this even desirable?

Athanasius needed to explain how this could be and how it could not be any other way.  First, he explains God’s motive.  He then follows with the necessity of God’s action.

God wants to be known.  Somehow this is part of what it means when I say, “God is love.”  There is a grand way in which he wants to be known, since it is fitting for me to worship him.  But through Jesus, I see there is a humble, almost self-deprecating way in which my God wants to be known.  In coming through Jesus, the Incarnation becomes nothing more than a plea for me to come and see and know him.

After the boy has been far away from The Giving Tree in Shel Silverstein’s book, she can barely whisper with joy, “Come, boy, climb my trunk, play in my branches, lie in my shade.”  That is the Incarnation.  God longs for me to be with him and Jesus makes the way for a boy like me.

He makes a way by always trying again.  Jesus is his last, best effort to bring me near.  All other efforts have pointed to him.  No other effort makes sense apart from him.  No other effort can bring me near.  His eternal Word stands in Jesus and calls out, “Come to me!”

The stained painting of Athanasius is the image of God that I see in myself and others.  The image is so distorted that I find God frightening and full of pride and judgment.  This is the image that people portrait.  Goodness is there, but it is mixed with evil and unintelligible.  So God paints Jesus.  In faith, I put aside the old image and focus my attention, my very life, on this new image of God that truly displays his likeness as well. 

I have found that what keeps me from loving certain people, what keeps me from appreciating certain God-inspired movements, what keeps me from coming to God in prayer, is having the wrong image in my mind.  I see certain people through the lens of a particular moment of pain from one person.  I see certain movements and traditions through the anger I harbor against someone who I envy or disagree with.  I see God as someone like myself, who gets tired of forgiving and hearing about people’s problems.  The image is marred.  I seek to replace those images and find Christ in everything.

Setting an image firmly in my mind is relatively simple.  I gaze at the image.  I study the image.  I delight in the image.  So I must learn to put aside the images of anger and lust that so easily intrude in my mind by placing the image of Jesus before me.  Actual pictures of Jesus may help, but there are pictures that God gives me that I want to learn to cling to.  A Father who holds my hand and never tires of it.  A teacher who delights in my questions and ponderings.  A Friend who enjoys our moments of play and conversation enough to lay everything aside.  A Mother who holds my head in her lap when everything has gone wrong.

Perhaps at the heart of it is one particular image that speaks to me through many pictures.  It answers my deepest longing and calms my darkest fear.  God never gets tired of me.

Lord, repaint your image in my mind, so I can fully embrace you in my heart.  Let that picture be Jesus, the one who never gets tired of me.  Amen.

I get tired of myself.  I do not provide an adequate picture of God.  This is where I am most “warped.”  In reality, God simply can’t get enough of me.  He has made me for himself.  I need to study that picture and its many faces, especially when I feel far from him.