Humility… greater than it is cracked up to be!!

God is a short word but what we fill the word with makes a huge difference. Is ‘Allah’ God is a strange question for Allah means ‘God’. The bigger issue is whether my God is truly the God of Israel and the Father of our Lord Jesus, or in simpler and very relevant language – is my God a Christlike God? None of us have a perfect vision / understanding of God, for it is when ‘he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2). There is a ‘test’ we can apply (oooooffff it is a tough one) we are more like God the clearer I see God / Jesus. So I have a way to go!

What words do you immediately associate with God (as revealed in Jesus). Maybe all-powerful, loving, accepting, harsh, tough… One of the words I associate with God is that of humility. Jesus being in the form of God (NOT IN SPITE OF) humbled himself – Jesus takes the God path. In a parable he suggests that in the age to come the one throwing the party will get up from the table and serve; while alive he gave us the instruction not to lord it over others.

Genesis and the tower of Babel (same word as Babylon) presents a humanity on a different path to the God-path. ‘We will be great’ being the banner.

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4).

The next verse is full of irony. A tower that truly reached heaven would be visible to the one who inhabits heaven, but we read that the God who can see all things came down to see the tower – obviously so did not reach heaven!!

Humility is the cloak of invisibility to the Slanderer; it is deeply set in the Lord’s prayer with the request that we be not led into temptation.

Big years globally lie ahead. Many rough waters to be traversed; many times the Lord will come down to see. While reading Genesis I have also been reading Matthew and in chapter 25 we might well have a reflection on the nations in the immediate post-70 AD/CE scenario but the application probably goes beyond that and it is expressed as a judgement of the nations. In separating the goats from the sheep the response was the same from the two separate groups:

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ (Matt. 25: 37-39, 44).

How you treated / reacted to the least of those that Jesus identifies as ‘family’ was the response.

Humility. I have been too close to movements that have thought they are the movement that will change the world. No, I don’t think so… I should put that stronger – no you are not! If God has given us something we should live and act as if the world will be deeply impoverished (oppressed) if we do not fulfil what has been entrusted to us, but we also realise that it might be the smallest contribution to the future. I (probably!!) have less years left than I have already had but be they few or many I aspire that humility will be part of my clothing and there will be no attempt at, or participation in, building a tower that reaches heaven… but if I have ‘two coins’ that I will knowingly or even accidentally throw them so that the impressive edifices come down.

Perspectives