Day 3939 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 2:8 NIV

Humility squared

Something done which itself was entire undeserved and yet endured in what’s become now something done in something of a doubling down of sorts. And it now in every way seems to say everything, this seeing the very Son of Heaven leave not only Heaven behind but His own safety too. Says all there is to say about me and you and what we do and what it all both put and still puts Him through. Not that He’s still suffering upon the cross every time we cross the line.

No.

Just that now that He fashioned that cross into the line that we cross, well, I’d imagine the pain is even deeper as bodily harm only hurts for so long.

Emotional, nigh on spiritual refusal, well, I can’t help but believe that such a things hurts worse than most physical pain ever could. And yet such is what we insist unto Him every single time that we opt for what remains a path spent in enmity against He who not only sat aside the comfort of Heaven to walk amongst, seeking to save, we heathen, but who in fact doubled down on that and delighted to endure what all He knew we’d put Him through.

Not because we deserve it, and neither because He did for neither do we deserve what He did nor He what we levied against Him. No, He did it all so as to embrace the fall knowing that it had gotten to such a degree that the fall was no longer what we did but had become who we’d been.

Question then is whether or not it’s still who we are.

Because such is the purpose of His coming to purchase what is a path redeemed, and that so much so that it begins in the place where our every path ends. For the grave is the epitome of all humility, and having had now the Son of Heaven come down to blaze the trail into that tomb, well, it gives us all we need to know about, well, all that matters most.

And indeed, I say this in something of a newfound humility that I’ve just myself found just recently. It began to meet me Monday morning as I awoke with that perceptively unfair and yet still fairly common frailty found in a throat sore and nose clogged. I then spent the day sifting through the possible causes so as to hopefully come upon a potential solution. I thought it might be nothing more than the weather having changed so drastically. Could be a lack of sleep having left me quite shattered and there exhausted. May have been a member of the family bringing home yet again another freaky disease as shared amongst this filthy humanity.

Perhaps nothing more than just an excuse I’d have never personally chosen in which to seek a humility that every arrogance thinks it already knows.

And within all of my worrying, whining and wheezing, all I seem to have found thus far is just myself rummaging through not only hours spent feeling horrible but also those feelings showing up within a regard to my common mindset as has been sat upon what I can now see a bit more clearly is nothing of even a hint of the first humility seen in the Son.

No, I’m all of the sudden quite taken aback by just how arrogant I am. For I am among those who, when faced with any illness or injury, I all but immediately begin reaching for that deck of cards I seek to in my ego deal of how I don’t deserve to deal with this unkind infirmity. It’s a hand we all know so well to play having played it so well inside so many days. That we shouldn’t have to suffer through sickness or scar. That we don’t deserve to endure hardship or hurting.

That we somehow still manage to assume that we’re elsewise owed the life of comfort we’ve grown here inside a sense of self that’s in sadness so deep that we don’t know how to see even the faintest outcropping of humility as it’s something scarcely grown in this ground we’ve mown of souls which know mostly only to moan over all we feel unfair in a life we still think should be.

And that without ever giving a single thought to what fairness would mean, obviously.

For if we were to consider true fairness in the face of what Christ endured for us to be free from the very arrogance that has inspired such sinfulness as to find us both doing all that we have that we never should have so delighted to do but also finding alongside that delusion a determination that we somehow still deserve to never endure anything hard or heavy, well, we’d find ourselves only so turned around that up would be down and down only where we know to be.

All because that’s the only place we’ve ever been.

And so such is the one place that the One Name knew to come find us.

Here inside the long-lived death of us.

And that thanks to an arrogance which is always able to somehow find both reason to do wrong and no reason to admit we have. And it takes no Harvard degree or mind made of an ability to comprehend the greater details of rocket telemetry to see why. No, it’s easy. It’s because we again, while stupid, are not dumb. For we understand that were we to ever agree that we’d done wrong, we’d too have to go through the process of meeting our punishment due.

Something none of us want to do.

Something that all of us in fact try to find any feasible way of escaping. Be it denial or distraction, we’re always of the traction aimed at sidestepping the suffering owed for having done so much so wrong along this road called life aimed thus nowhere other than wherever we already are.

Simply because you can’t actually find a new place if not of the faith that’s willing to try a new thing.

And well, when it comes to sin and thus the living of a life lost within, we’re definitely the old dogs spoken sometimes derogatorily of.

No, of all we’re willing to learn, new tricks ain’t on the list.

Instead we seem to spend most days, especially these decidedly miserable kind in which I myself presently find myself, seeking for ways to still prove that our feeble understandings as stood both in pride and thus against life are somehow plausibly conducive to the proper living thereof. That we can be the ones who manage to find ways to defines all days as being good, or that someone else is always to blame when they instead bring pain, hardship, failure or fear.

Most of which Jesus himself experienced whilst here, all without the blaming part thought.

All but the failure.

Something itself all but too impossible for us to even begin to consider.

All because that is, again, the way of life we’ve never lived. For we’ve all become of such a staunch stance as stood upon our selfishness that all we can see or seem to understand is this idealized if not in fact idolized way of life in which we endure no struggle, face no strain, experience no pain and thus enjoy only all we delight.

Which is yet again something we see nothing of in Jesus Christ.

Now that’s not to say that He didn’t enjoy some things along the way to where He knew He’d come to go. I’m sure He did for, after all, though He’s the One who designed the cross as the vessel by which to atone the lost, He’s also the One who created such experiences as laughter and the every amusement of children who spend their days running through fields finding there only the kind of faith that gets lost as they grow old.

I think often of all I’ve lost along the way, and how it’s all sadly best measured by that which has replaced it.

And well, for the life of me I can’t manage to actually see how such things as all the anger and frustration that I so often feel are supposed to be worthy replacements for the hope and happiness that are now always so distant.

Yeah, safe to say I’ve missed it somehow.

For instead what I have found is that instead of faith I seek rather to understand everything in what’s then a sort of selfishness that seeks to control the same. Rather than happiness I know more now of haughtiness in what’s become a life in which I find that I deserve to be happy, and thus only set myself up for disappointment when the happiness I demand doesn’t show up. Instead of peace I pursue pride thinking it still able to add something of worth or importance unto my life.

And rather than Him I seek only more of me in what I’ve long thought a perfect show of humility as seen inside how miserable I often make myself appear.

Indeed, it would seem that within these days since coming down with whatever this is for whatever reason it may have come I’ve found faith as being of equal importance to everything from anger to despair.

It’s amazing the things we do down here at this rock bottom we’ve both designed, come to hate, been offered to from such be saved, and yet refuse the chance every chance we get.

All because of an arrogance that He literally did all He could to help us see for what it is.

And newsflash folks, it definitely ain’t life!

No, rather arrogance is the doorway to death itself in that it seeks forever actively any possible way to avoid that which is in every way guaranteed. Things such as this illness which has leveled me into realizing just how arrogant and selfish I am. Or injury which equally sidelines us from these normal workings we delight to continue in this continued assumption that what we’re doing matters as much as we like to think it might.

Or death, which is the one enemy of life which will in fact call our every name and of us all have its fill.

We seek to avoid them all because we know both the humility they inspire and that it’s nothing we know anything of. A fact which goes a little further to say that nor then do we know much of Christ, if anything at all. I mean, how could we? He literally not only left Heaven behind to walk here in this place that I think we could all agree cannot be even a fraction of what’s said of Heaven but also did so along a path aimed always at what He knew would be a misery so perfect that only it could accomplish a salvation the same.

All because He who wrote the Law also retains the only right to write the weight of the debt to be owed by those who in and with their lives seek not it to uphold.

In other words, God deserves to define the punishments owed in response to our having all chosen to have become this lost so as to even more love the idea of staying here. Yes, God is just in defining death as the price we all must pay.

But He is also mercy in that He came to pay it for us should we choose to share in His humility for once.

Humility thus seen threefold:

Once leaving Heaven behind, again in enduring the cross and the third in doing both the above only because He was willing to set aside His rightful wrath and offer us grace and forgiveness instead.

Of what humility though is seen now in us?

As for me, well, personally I don’t see much. For again, this newest dance with illness has found for me so many things that I know now I need to work on that I can honestly say I already knew I needed to but would have otherwise continued to refuse even acknowledging in what’s elsewise a way of life I spend just busy enough to oddly enough never have the time.

But to be honest, it’s all done in my mind. Not just this cold or whatever it is and the brain fog it’s rolled in. No, all the years spent doing only things that worried only about me. All the time given to giving Him nothing much at all. All the thoughts wasted upon racing through matters that never mattered. All the self-imposed false piety and humility as measured only through a harsh treatment of the body.

Yes, look at how miserable I am! Look at all the joy I refuse myself! Look at all the peace I simply will not welcome! Just look everyone at how humble I am!

I know nothing of humility. For it turns out that I know only my kind, and yet mine isn’t even a thing, much less something seen in a share of His. Because Christ didn’t just put on a show. He didn’t just say some words that were never backed with action, put into practice. He didn’t merely come to this Earth to give some well-rehearsed speeches trying to entertain as much as educate. No, He put His faith and fealty to the ultimate test, testing Himself even!

And that in such a way that He withheld nothing and refused to refuse the same.

No, I think of that part in Scripture where He tells those with Him when the people came to seize Him to basically just let it happen. Even once referred to Peter as Satan and asked that He get behind Him and thus out of His way of doing what He’d come to do, something that Peter was only trying to help Him avoid because he didn’t yet understand what Christ was going to do and why.

How often then are we the enemy that He might need behind Him and out of His way?

How often do we get in His way of doing what He’s trying to do, and that on our behalf, all because we still exist in this search for our brand of fairness as is always founded upon comfort and safety? Yes, how many days do those such things take precedent over His will?

How can we possibly know any of the above when we only know to seek such things as those which He so clearly never did?

For Christ didn’t come seeking His own comfort. He didn’t waste His time worrying about having fun. He wasn’t as preoccupied as we all so often are with such worries as safety and security. Rather He was focused so fully on the Father’s will being done that, even in those hours just prior to what He knew was coming, even then He prayed that if this couldn’t be avoided, that so be it.

Just so long as the Father’s will be done.

Can we say the same? And that even in lives lived not facing anything really? I mean sure, being sick isn’t fun. Getting hurt’s not a good time. Losing our jobs brings some impressive stress. Getting dumped hurts a lot. Feeling lonely and scared and ignored and worthless, hopeless, it all sucks!

But as of yet none of us have denied ourselves to the point of actually shedding our blood to prove just how far we’re willing to go in the search for what we know to be right.

No, rather we more often settle for a life lived in such a way that most often has us searching for only ways to evade the reality of what we’ve done or to blame someone else for who we’ve become.

We know nothing of humility.

But how then can we know anything of the Son?

I know I’m tired having not slept very well for going on a week now. I know the pressure in my head is causing thoughts to become harder to think than normal. I know that my getting sick always inspires me to become quite angry and frustrated, and that easily. But there’s just something about some of these thoughts that I have been thinking that have me thinking that I have a long way to go in what’s now the complete opposite direction of what has, for a long time, seemed right to me.

All because it stands to reason that He who left Heaven to come and save we heathen would thus not desire for us to continue living this kind of life spent looking for anything really. No, that Christ walked this world with such a focus on not what He would go through or how it would likely feel but where it all aimed and thus the purpose for which He came, it seems to say that so too should our faith be that dialed in to focusing far more on Him.

And that more than anything else.

Even how we feel. Even the hardships we endure. Even the loneliness, the misery, the persecution we might happen upon. We can’t continue to let anything in this world take our focus off of trusting in His will.

And that’s because His will has never been so shallow as to worry about the temporary. Rather He knows that as this world is passing away, and so too then these very bodies taken and fashioned from the same, that everything here will pass away. Even the pain. Even the illness. Even the hatred and hostility. It will all end.

Question is whether or not our faith will before it does.

I’m ashamed to say that all the sudden I’m not sure that my faith, my trust in Him is of the ability to withstand much at all. Because I’ve been far too angry this week as I suffer in this infirmity. I get angry a lot in fact. And yet it seems that anger and frustration are only evidence of our still believing that there’s some kind of something that we don’t deserve to so endure.

Thankfully I know that He who is humility can thus instruct me to become more humble myself. I just pray that I stop fighting against His trying to do just that before time runs out and I’ve no such opportunity left.

Because He’s already left Heaven behind once to come and find me. Should He leave this next time and find me only angry, arrogant and thus unready, well, no reason to think He’d ask me to come with Him.

And that terrifies me.

For if I know myself to be this upset over something so little as illness, what makes me think I know anything of the humility that’s willing to welcome death?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold